Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
However, Ron Paul is not a broken clock and so far he was just about wrong on every issue. But we all know that America’s money-printing machines are spinning like Iranian centrifuges, and that the the coming disaster is as inevitable as the collapse of Zimbabwe, where a billion doesn’t even buy a loaf of bread.
BY DAVID EDWARDS AND STEPHEN WEBSTER
Ron Paul, the popular Republican Congressman from Texas, is ripping into the president and Congress for what he sees as their “goal” with round after round of stimulus: complete economic collapse.
“From their spending habits, an economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” he said in his June 22, 2009, weekly address.
He added that Democrats who voted for the president’s war funding request, which gave an additional $106 billion to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — among other, unrelated items — were actually voting in favor of the wars, not just authorization of the president’s agenda.
He called it an affront to everyone who believed a vote for Obama was a vote for a peace candidate.
The president’s insistence on including an additional $108 billion in asset exchange with the International Monetary Fund is merely “buying global oppression,” he said.
Paul added that, “this [bill sent] $660 million to Gaza, $555 million to Israel, $310 million to Egypt, $300 million to Jordan and $420 million to Mexico; and some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for so-called peace keeping missions.”
In other words, the latest U.S. war funding was an “International bailout,” he said.
The legislation’s provisions for the IMF included 100 billion dollars for the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB), a credit instrument providing the multilateral institution with additional resources to deal with exceptional risks to the stability of the international monetary system.
They also include an expansion of the nation’s special drawing rights by five billion SDRs, adding roughly eight billion dollars to the IMF’s financial firepower.
The 100 billion dollars for the NAB acts as a credit line for the IMF in case member countries need emergency loans that exceed the institution’s resources. As such, the money is not considered an immediate budget expense.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) had proposed to strip out the IMF funds, but his measure was defeated in May by a vote of 64-30.
“Not only does sending money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help,” Paul said. “Along with IMF loans come IMF required policy changes called ’structural adjustment programs,’ which amount to forced Keynesianism. This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that brought our own country to its knees.”
This audio is from Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly address, released June 22, 2009
By: Rick Pedraza
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says he was dismayed that Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill so easily last week.
“An economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” Paul said during his weekly radio address Monday.
“Washington spends with impunity, domestically bailing and nationalizing basically everything they can get their hands on,” Paul said.
Mocking the idea that Obama was a “peace candidate,” Paul pointed out that hisadministration will be sending another $106 billion it doesn’t have “to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq without a hint of a plan to bring American troops home.”
Paul noted that many of his congressional colleagues who previously voted with him in opposition to every war supplemental request under the Bush administration seem to have changed their tune. He maintains that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war.
“Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse,” Paul said. “As long as Congress continues to enable these dangerous interventions abroad, there is no end in sight: that is until we face total economic collapse.”
Paul noted that, as Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the foreign aid and International Monetary Fund appropriations in the spending bill passed last week can be called an international bailout:
The emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends:
Paul said that IMF loans require policy changes called “structural adjustment” programs, which amount to “forced Keynesianism.”
“This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that has brought our own country to its knees,” Paul said, “and IMF loans act as the Trojan horse to inflict it on others.”
Leaders in recipient nations tend to become more concerned with the wishes of international needs than the needs of their own people, he said.
“Argentina and Kenya are just two examples of countries that followed IMF mandates right off a cliff. The IMF frequently recommends currency devaluations to poorer nations, which has wiped out the already impoverished over and over.”
Paul noted a long list of brutal dictators the IMF happily supported and propped up with loans that left their oppressed populaces with staggering amounts of debt with no economic progress to show for it.
The continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make America safer at home but, in fact, undermines national security, he said.
“We are buying nothing but evil and global oppression by sending [our] taxpayer dollars to the IMF — not to mention there is no constitutional authority to do so.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
From Atlas Shrugs:
STATE DEPT URGES “U.S. EMBASSIES WORLDWIDE” TO “PURCHASE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF LOCAL CURRENCIES; ENOUGH TO LAST THEM A YEAR”
More troubling news afoot. Is US Dept of State Advising Some Embassies To Obtain Year’s Worth of Local Currencies? If so, why? Does it expect a dollar collapse in the next 4-6 months? (hat tip TC)
“Latest Schultz Shock: a ‘bank holiday’ Commentary: A leading newsletter paints a grim picture of the future” by Peter Brimelow, Jun 24, 2009, 1:35 a.m. EST WSJ Market Watch. com
In its current issue, HSL reports rumors that “Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that ‘something’ is about to happen … within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days.”
Yes, yes, it’s paranoid. But paranoids have enemies — and the Crash of 2008 really did happen.
HSL’s suspicion: “Another FDR-style ‘bank holiday’ of indefinite length, perhaps soon, to let the insiders sort out the bank mess, which (despite their rosy propaganda campaign) is getting more out of their control every day. Insiders want to impose new bank rules. Widespread nationalization could result, already underway. It could also lead to a formal U.S. dollar devaluation, as FDR did by revaluing gold (and then confiscating it).”
