U.S. Representative Ron Paul

Texas Straight Talk

A weekly column

More Spending is Always the Answer

Last week, the House approved another increase in the national debt ceiling.  This means the government can borrow $1.9 trillion more to stay afloat and avoid default.  It has been little more than a year since the last debt limit increase, and graphs showing the debt limit over time show a steep, almost vertical trend.  It is not likely to be very long before this new ceiling is met and the government is back on the brink between default and borrowing us further into oblivion.  Congressional leaders and the administration acknowledge that the debt limit will need to be [continue reading]

02-08-2010, 02:07 PM | 38 Comments

Spending Freeze Not Likely

Last week politicians in Washington made a few things clear about how they really feel about the state of the union.  First, they are beginning to hear the growing discontent with the size and scope of government and the broken promises that keep piling up.  Certain events in Massachusetts recently made that statement loud, clear and unavoidable.  In the face of those events, the powers that be made the determination that some populist rhetoric was in order, and the idea of a spending freeze in Washington was proposed, albeit with several caveats.  These caveats to the proposed spending freeze [continue reading]

02-01-2010, 01:52 PM | 45 Comments

Legalize Competing Currencies

Much has been made recently about the supposed economic recovery.  A few blips in a few statistics and many believe our troubles are all over.  Of course, they have to redefine recovery as “jobless” to account for the lack of improvement on Main Street.  But the banks have money, Wall Street is chugging along, and the administration would like to get on with other agendae. They have even set up a commission to investigate the crisis as if it were all in the past. The truth is that Americans are still losing jobs, the Fed is still inflating, and [continue reading]

01-25-2010, 12:32 PM | 53 Comments

Government is Too Big to Succeed

Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off their first round of hearings on the causes of the economic meltdown on Wall Street.  The commission is being compared to the the Pecora Commission launched in 1932 to investigate the causes of the Great Depression.  The Pecora commission is beloved by those who believe the solution to every problem is more laws because it was used to justify a number of new laws, including Glass-Steagall.  Of course, none of those laws addressed the real causes of the Great Depression.   It was the introduction of unsound monetary policy and central [continue reading]

01-19-2010, 12:15 PM | 38 Comments

Why the Fed Likes Independence

Last week it was revealed that when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, he urged AIG officials not to disclose to the Securities Exchange Commission relevant details of agreements with banks to bail out Goldman Sachs.  Apparently he felt at the time that regulators and the public would be angry that taxpayer money was used to fully compensate bankers who made some horrifically bad investment decisions.  These banks should have suffered the consequences of the huge risks they were taking.  After all, they kept plenty of rewards when times were good.  Instead, the [continue reading]

01-11-2010, 01:11 PM | 59 Comments

See archived Texas Straight Talk columns »