Ron Paul: 'Monetary system is fraudulent'
(CNN) -- Former presidential candidate Ron Paul was interviewed Friday morning by CNN anchor John Roberts on "American Morning."
Rep. Ron Paul says that what really needs regulating is the Federal Reserve.
Rep. Ron Paul says that what really needs regulating is the Federal Reserve.
Paul, a Republican from Texas, spoke from his home in Clute, Texas. The topic of the discussion was the current economic crisis and the Capitol Hill testimony Thursday of former Fed chief Alan Greenspan.
John Roberts, CNN anchor: Up there on the Hill, Alan Greenspan was basically saying, "Oops, I missed this one, sorry about it," but he was optimistic for the future. Congressman Paul, do you even listen to him anymore?
Rep. Ron Paul: I have to because somebody like you might ask me a question about him.
No, I don't really listen in the sense that I'm going to get a lot of new information. I used to listen to him when he was writing back in the '60s because he agreed with free market economics and no respect for the Federal Reserve.
Lately, though, I mean, he's been part of -- and right now he's really gotten bad because what he was saying yesterday was that the only place where he might have made a mistake is he didn't advocate more regulations.
Well, if you're a true free market person it isn't the lack of regulations. Trying to regulate and improve on the conditions that the government creates. I mean we created this problem. The Federal Reserve created this. The Community Reinvestment Act created it. The FDIC created it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created it.
It was all seen there but now he says if we could have only had more regulations ...
Roberts: Right.
Paul: ... we could have salvaged this clogged system.
Roberts: Well, you believe that markets can be or should be self-regulating?
Paul: Well, to a degree, but the government does have a responsibility to deal with fraud, but the monetary system is fraudulent. Instead of perpetuating fraud in the monetary system they should be dealing with real fraud.
But just regulating prices -- that's what they're doing now, they're trying to regulate prices and set prices for these assets that hasn't -- have no value. So, no, that's not the kind of regulation we want, but there is certainly a role for regulations.
We should be regulating the Federal Reserve system is what we really ought to be regulating.
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