Ron Paul Vs. Ben Bernanke... Continued RP Statement and Fed Response 2/27/08

Congressman Ron Paul slammed Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke during a House Financial Services Committee meeting today for following a policy of deliberately destroying the dollar and wiping out the American middle class.

Paul held Bernanke to task over his refusal to address the decline of the dollar and its clear link to inflation.

"Inflation comes from the unwise increase in the supply of money credit....to argue that we can continue to debase the currency, which is really the policy of that you're following, purposely debasing value of currency - which to me seems so destructive....it just puts more pressure on the federal reserve to create capital out of thin air in order to stimulate the economy and usually that just goes into mal-investment," said Paul.
Paul highlighted the fact that the M3 money supply was rising at a rate of 16 per cent and that this was the real rate of inflation.

"History is against you," Paul told Bernanke, "History is on the side of hard money - if you look at stable prices you have to look at the only historic sound money that's lasted more than a few years - fiat money always ends, gold is the only thing where you get stable prices," he added, pointing out that despite the price of oil's rapid ascent, it had remained flat when compared to the price of gold.

"I cannot see how we can continue to accept the policy of deliberately destroying the value of money as an economic value," said Paul, adding that the policy was "immoral," and would lead to a reduction in American's living standards and "the middle class being wiped out."

Asked how he could defend a policy of deliberately depreciating the dollar, Bernanke stumbled through his response and was basically forced to agree with Paul's point.

Paul's comments come on the day that the dollar hit its all time low against the Euro.

Earlier this week, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan laid the groundwork for the further collapse of the greenback by encouraging Gulf states to abandon their dollar peg.

Watch Paul's opening statement.