National Review published an extensive interview with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) Wednesday. The discussion centered primarily around Paul’s views on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. Paul has been a longtime opponent of the Fed — he titled his book End the Fed — and was tapped to head the subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which oversees the Fed, now that Republicans control the U.S. House. For those concerned that Paul would seek to undercut the Federal Reserve by any means with his new position, the interview offers both hope and reason for concern. It doesn’t appear that a Paul chairmanship will be dominated by measures to completely strip the Fed of its power, but Paul will try to use his new position of power to highlight his concerns with the institution.
nro: Are you going to try to use your influence there to, as per your book title, “End the Fed”?
PAUL: Not directly. Indirectly, though, yes. The Fed will end because the system we have is not viable. All printing-money systems always end. So my goal in the book as well as in the committee is to expose the Fed for what they do, how important it is economically, why they don’t achieve what they pretend to achieve, and why they need to have more transparency. I would just like to legalize competition, legalize the Constitution, and allow people to use gold and silver as legal tender. And then if people don’t like the paper money, they can start using gold and silver in savings accounts or spending or whatever. Today if you do that, you go to prison.
Paul also briefly discussed his take on a number of other issues such as illegal immigration (perhaps not quite as libertarian as you might expect), making another presidential run in 2012 (he’s still deciding), and the new majority in the House. Besides his son Rand Paul — who has moved in with his father in Washington D.C., after he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky — Paul sees potential allies in the new class of Republicans.
A lot are not politicians, a lot have run their first races, like Rand did — that was his first race, he didn’t work his way up the system. I think it will be a lot of people like that who will be very independent-minded, and that’s what we need.
Read the full interview at NR’s website.
