I received an email the other day from Paul-Martin Foss, Legislative Assistant at the Office of Congressman Ron Paul:
Dear Friends of Dr. Paul,
If you are receiving this email, it is because you are a friend of Dr. Paul, a witness at one of our monetary policy hearings, a contributor to what has become Dr. Paul’s Monetary Policy Anthology, or likely some combination of the three.
To honor and preserve Dr. Paul’s legacy as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, we have compiled an anthology containing all of Dr. Paul’s activities as chairman. It contains all of his hearings within the DMP subcommittee, transcripts of our Tea Talk Lecture Series, transcripts of his exchanges with Fed Chairman Bernanke, etc.
As a single document, the anthology as formatted runs to over 5000 pages, so we are splitting it into multiple sections and hosting it on Dr. Paul’s Congressional website. Today is the only day that those files will be available online, because today is the last day of the 112th Congress and our website will likely be taken down by close of business today.
Mr Foss subsequently uploaded the files to Dropbox for posterity. We have also archived them in our Downloads section. Here are the direct links:
- Vol I – Cobden Centre – Dropbox
- Vol II, Part 1 – Cobden Centre – Dropbox
- Vol II, Part 2 – Cobden Centre – Dropbox
- Vol II, Part 3 – Cobden Centre – Dropbox
I was honoured to give expert testimony to Congress and highlight the work of Steve Baker and Douglas Carswell, both inspired by Dr Paul and his work in the USA. I believe page 816 has my testimony highlighting their work. There our other people working in the fractional reserve free banking tradition such as Prof White and Selgin who also gave testimony . There are also people such as Prof Jesus Huerta De Soto and Prof Salerno and Lew Rockwell in the more 100% Reserve Free Banking tradition . My favourite all time investment commentator Jim Grant also gives us his testimony . There are many others – I would urge you to read each section over the next few weeks or when ever you have time if you are interested in money and banking reform in our tradition.
Quite so.
And, of course, we must be on our guard against “precious metal money” that is, really, nothing of the sort.
For example, the suggestion from a leftist (“liberal”) Democrat for a “trillion Dollar platinum coin”. A real one ouce platinum coin would be worth about two THOUSAND Dollars (not a TILLION Dollars).
An extreme example certainly – but yet another warning that gold (or any other material) “standard” is no good (any more than it was in the late 1920s when it did not stop the massive bubble building of Benjamin Strong).
A commodity currency should be just that – a commodity currency, not a FRAUD (something that is called after a commodity – but it not really a commodity at all).
For example, do people really want a “gold Dollar”?
Some people say “no” – fair enough. But some people say “yes” – but then try to dodge the CONSEQUENCES of that choice.
If the Dollar is gold – then all the Dollar is (all it is) is the amount of gold that the government actually (phyiscally) has, divided by the number of Dollars.
“But then when we went with a Dollar – we would get very little gold, just a speck of gold”.
YES – but that is the truth.
The govenrment can not give you what it does not have. A gold Dollar would be a very small amount of gold.
A gold Dollar would be a very small amount of gold.
True, indeed. But if it couldn’t be further inflated, a dollar worth even one/tenth of a grain of gold would be worth its weight in … well, you know.
Craig Howard.
Agreed.