Ron Paul On Surging Inflation, Oil Shock, Bond Market Collapse

Ron Paul (0:00)

Inflation is here to stay until it collapses. And what I fear now is maybe that collapse is not too far off. That we still have a lot of wealth that we can consume before we have the crack of boom. I think gold and silver goes up, markets are going to go down, and the worst of all is that there's more likely, because the wealth will not be distributed fairly, and there will be a lot more violence in the streets.

David Lin (0:26)

My great pleasure and honor to welcome back the show, Ron Paul, host of The Liberty Report, former congressman, former presidential nominee, and Dr. Paul, it's just a great pleasure to have you back on the show today. Welcome back.

Ron Paul (0:39)

Thank you very much, David. Good to be with you.

David Lin (0:42)

The Fed just raised their Fed funds rate for the first time in three years. The 10-year yield hit 5% yesterday, the highest since 2007 Oil is at above $100 a barrel for both WTI and Brent.

Diesel is at the highest ever in the American history. And the Iran war doesn't seem to have an off ramp right now. Americans are concerned about a lot of things, cost of living being one of them, potentially losing their jobs, to AI being another. What are you most concerned about as an American?

Ron Paul (1:13)

Well, I'm always concerned about one thing in particular because it includes everything else, and that is the personal liberty of as many people as we can reach.

And I think when we do that, then you end up talking about all the subjects. If you're talking about individual liberty, you want the government to do the least amount of meddling around with people's personal habits and personal monetary system. So it's a system of government that makes the difference. If you're interested in civil liberties, you got to get the government out of the way. And people have to know that they can handle their problems by themselves. If they accept a law that should be applied to everybody, and that's the natural law. People should be able to lie, to cheat, steal or kill people. And that would solve a lot of problem.

But unfortunately, the human race is not quite up to that. But I think we should always strive in that direction. And of course, I spent most of my time in political life trying to tie in the significance of honest money with these issues of big government. So we wouldn't have the type of government we have now in the United States if we had not been able to control the reserve currency of the world and fudge the system, borrow the money and default on our debt. And that is where the problem is. So I think if people are concerned where we are today, they have to look at the big picture, then we look at the smaller things like, why are we fighting this war and why are we fighting that war?

David Lin (2:58)

Well, let me provide an explanation for that from the perspective of people who support the Iran War. If I may, Dr. Paul, the proponents of the Iran War, and even some members of the Trump administration say, we are fighting Iran because fighting terrorism makes us safer, better do it now than later before Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it becomes a real problem, ultimately making us more free. Do you agree with that?

Ron Paul (3:23)

No, it doesn't make us, it makes us more dangerous because I imagine one of the greatest motivations for Iran right now to have a nuclear weapon is because they've been surrounded by dozens of nuclear bombs and they have no way to even pretend they have a defense. So I would say that, you know, this argument that they're going to get rid of the nuclear weapons and prevent the weapons of Iran. I think our policy gives them the incentive and the excuse to do this. But I think that has been worn out. You know, that is an excuse that we're over there because we don't want them to have them. There was a treaty on going just a couple years ago that was canceled, you know, by Trump, that could be working in that direction. So I think that to say that the whole reason, boy, it's a good thing we did this because we stopped them from having them up. Well, if they're stopped, why are we still there? We know they're not telling the truth about why we're there. So but the excuse is something to scare the people.

And they certainly did that after 9-11. Oh, you know, Saddam Hussein was going to come bomb New York City with a nuclear bomb. And that's it. But then the people respond to that. That's the way the politicians were. Scare the people, and then they will capitulate and do what the politicians tell them.