2016
Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson raised
questions about the United States' fiat monetary system during an economics
interview last week. By Barry
Donegan - Oct
12, 2015
During an interview on economics last week, 2016 GOP
presidential candidate Ben Carson raised questions about U.S. monetary policy
and said that as president he would not authorize any government spending
increases.
Outlining his government spending policy, Carson told Marketplace: If we simply refuse to
extend the budget by one penny for three to four years, you got a balanced
budget. Just like that. So this is not pie in the sky, very difficult thing to
accomplish. Having said that, one of the bugaboos that has kept us from
reducing government in the past is sacred cows. What I would do is first of
all, allow the government to shrink by attrition. Don’t replace the people who
are retiring, thousands of them each year. And No. 2: Take every departmental
head, or sub-department head and tell them, ‘I want a 3 to 4 percent
reduction.’ Now anybody who tells me there’s not 3 to 4 percent fat in
virtually everything that we do is fibbing to themselves.
When Carson was asked by Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal
whether he would support now-routine increases to the U.S. debt limit, he
replied, “Let me put it this
way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely
would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut… I would provide
the kind of leadership that says, ‘Get on the stick guys, and stop messing
around, and cut where you need to cut, because we’re not raising any spending
limits, period.’”
He added, “I
mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You’re
always gonna ask the same question every year. And we’re just gonna keep going
down that pathway. That’s one of the things I think that the people are tired
of.”
Carson then raised questions about America’s fiat monetary
system and said that it enables out-of-control spending:
Now the only reason that we can sustain that kind of debt is
because of our artificial ability to print money, to create what we think is
wealth, but it is not wealth, because it’s based upon our faith and credit. You
know, we decoupled it from the domestic gold standard in 1933, and from the
international gold standard in 1971, and since that time, it’s not based on
anything. Why would we be continuing to do that?
Responding to a question asking him to pinpoint the gravest
issue facing the U.S. economy, Carson said, “I
think our debt is horrendous. You know, one of the things that happens with
this level of debt is that it’s very difficult for the Fed to raise interest
rates. And why is that such a problem? Well it used to be that Joe the Butcher
would take 5 percent of his earnings every week and put it into a savings
account. And he would watch that grow over two, or three, or four decades. And
by the time he was ready to retire, he was in good shape. Now, poor people and
middle-class people really don’t have a mechanism to grow their money. The only
people who can grow their money are people who have a certain risk tolerance.
And those tend to be upper-income people who can utilize the stock market.”
Noticing what appeared to be Carson’s anti-Federal Reserve
rhetoric, Ryssdal asked him to comment specifically on the Federal Reserve
and its chair Janet Yellen. Carson balked at the chance to criticize either
directly and said, “Well, you
know, I’ve known Janet Yellen for a long time. We’ve served on boards together,
and she’s a very intelligent individual, very responsible, and obviously is
trying to do what she thinks is right. But she’s caught between a rock and a
hard place, and I understand that. And that’s why I would tend to really put
the emphasis on driving down our debt, because that’s how we begin to correct
the problem. You know, unless we correct the fundamental problems, all the
other stuff we’re doing isn’t going to matter that much.”
Carson also said that early wealthy American industrialists
built the foundation for America’s economic engine. “You know, the Europeans, they looked
over here and they saw the Rockefellers, and the Vanderbilts, and the Fords,
and the Kelloggs, and the Carnegies, and the Mellons, and they said you can’t
run a country like that. You’ve gotta have an overarching government that
receives all the funding and equity that redistributes it, so we actually
inspired socialism.”
“But all of those people that I just mentioned,” Carson
continued, “they didn’t just
hoard money and pass it down from generation to generation, they built the
infrastructure of our country. They build the transcontinental railroads and
seaports and textile mills and factories that enabled the development of the
most powerful and dynamic middle class the world has ever seen, which rapidly
propelled us to the pinnacle,” he said.
Commenting on Carson’s questioning of America’s fiat currency
system, Washington Post writer Matt O’Brien implied that the retired neurosurgeon is not
a “candidate of serious
policy,” criticized the concept of a gold dollar standard, and
defended the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates.
Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken then challenged O’Brien’s critique of
Carson on the issue. “Without
a hint of irony, O’Brien suggests that interest rates guided by the market
simply lack the wisdom of our current PhD Standard,” said McMaken.
Comments
I would
like a Trump / Carson Whitehouse in 2017. I want Ted Cruz as Speaker of the
House and Rand Paul as Majority Leader of the Senate. I would like Barack Obama deported back to
Indonesia, where he could run for President.
Nixon didn’t have to take the dollar off the gold standard. He could have kept it and let the conversion
price of gold float up to its market price. US dollars would now be convertible
to gold at: 1 US dollar to 1/1100s oz of gold.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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