As part of Mike Maloney's recent documentary [5], Ron Paul was interviewed to discuss the monetary system that he proposes. He begins... "Just get the government out-of-the-way, you know, and let the markets decide and apply the rules of ’no counterfeiting’ to the people and to the government..." as he goes on to discuss everything from The Founding Fathers to how a gold standard could work...
Via Market Sanity [6],
The following is a bonus feature on the Hidden Secrets of Money episode 4 [7]. The video can only be watched by subscribing to Hidden Secrets of Money [8]. However, a full transcript of the interview has been written by Market Sanity for your convenience:
Mike Maloney: If you could create a monetary system for the world, what would it be?
Ron Paul: Just get the government out-of-the-way, you know, and let the markets decide and apply the rules of ’no counterfeiting’ to the people and to the government.
MM: So you would make fraud and theft illegal for everybody, not just everybody except the financial sector?
RP: Ya. If you and I devised a gold standard and we issued certificates that were guaranteed in gold, then if we ever defrauded people we ought to go to jail for it. That would be the minimal role of government. But you know, today, the Constitution still says – even though they ignore it – that only gold and silver can be used as legal tender.
If the government wanted to issue a gold coin and make sure that it was an honest weight and measure, it still would be legal for the state to do that. But, I think because it’s a mandate on the states; the states should not use anything other than silver and gold. That interpretation should be rather broad too: that the states could do it. The prohibition against the states was that they couldn’t issue bills of credit. The Founders knew what paper money meant because the states were doing it like crazy. That’s one of the reasons why they had the Constitutional Convention was because of the monetary issue. So they [the states] aren’t allowed to print money. And that’s OK, that’s counterfeiting. At the same time, they could use gold and silver.
But I would allow the market to work, because I think we’re more sophisticated on money now through free market understanding. The Founders accepted the notion of a fixed ratio between gold and silver. Bimetallism is not a good economic theory because it’s too rigid. If there’s a discovery of silver, and the price of silver goes down, you know, you want that to be flexible.
But that doesn’t mean the free market wouldn’t use gold and silver. Just look today. It’s so much easier to adjust, you know, with our computers and all. If you walked into a store, I could just imagine. In many places, more likely in foreign countries, they’ll take dollar or their local currencies and have immediate conversion. But you can also have immediate conversion between gold and silver, or certificates in silver or a credit card in silver. You could pay it in silver. You can pay it in dollars or Euros today and it’s immediate.
I would let the market decide it. It could be that they want to use a basket of commodities. I’m still old-fashioned enough that if I’m thinking in terms of a unit of an account, and I have a bunch of them on paper or on a credit card…if I want to put them in a handful of silver or a handful of gold, I like that idea. That for me is the ultimate test, but it doesn’t mean another system wouldn’t work if you followed these basic rules.
It would not be flawless because people have the tendency to break the rules, but happens when a government has the worldwide fiat currency and breaks the rules for 40 years? That is such gross distortion, and that’s why the imbalances are so great right now of the debt and the debt system and all the malinvestment. They did not prevent the correction, they just propped it up in 09′. So the correction didn’t occur, and if you want the system to continue you really have to allow the correction to happen. That, of course, is why we haven’t had a recovery.