Pro-Bitcoin Ron Paul Agrees with Trump Over ‘Clueless’ Fed
Donald Trump has gained an unlikely ally in delivering criticism against the central bank. | Source: Getty Images/AFP/Shutterstock/AFP; Edited by CCN.com
Ron Paul, the pro-bitcoin retired U.S. Congressman, says President Donald Trump is correct when he says the Federal Reserve is clueless and useless. Moreover, Paul says the Fed should stop manipulating interest rates because that fuels artificial bubbles and stock market crashes.
Rand Paul: The Fed Does More Harm than Good
In a blistering July 19 Fox Business column, the father of Senator Rand Paul says Trump should curb the unfettered power of the Fed to roil the financial markets.
“President Trump is right – the Fed doesn’t know what it is doing. But it is up to him to stop it from further increasing in power. For over a century, the central bank has inadvertently caused rampant inflation, economic recessions, and even wealth inequality.”
Paul blamed the Federal Reserve’s artificial manipulation of interest rates for causing recessions and a shocking 95% plunge in Americans’ buying power.
“The only thing the Fed is good at is making life hard on the middle class by inflating consumer prices. Consumer Price Index inflation in the pre-Fed years of 1790-1912 was just 0.22%. But between 1913-2013, it skyrocketed to 3.35%. So much for its goal of stabilizing prices.”
Paul: Trump Must Check the Fed’s Power
Paul — a Libertarian and frequent critic of Trump — credited Trump for spotlighting the Fed’s rank incompetence. But Paul say it’s not enough just to call out the Fed for its screw-ups. He says Trump must stem the central bank’s power to cause more damage.
“Will Trump stop the Fed from doing even more harm to the American economy by preventing it from extending its tentacles into other parts of the U.S. financial system?”
Fed Hiked Rates 7 Times During Trump’s First 2 Years
Paul’s volcanic smack-downs of the U.S. central bank occurred against the backdrop of another scathing tweetstorm by Trump.
In the tweets, Trump says the U.S. economy would be doing much better now if the Fed had not instituted “quantitative tightening” by raising interest rates seven times during his first two years in office.
“The Fed “raised” far too fast and too early. Also must stop with the crazy quantitative tightening…Had they not acted so fast and “so much,” we would be doing even better than we are doing right now.”
Repeated Fed Rate Hikes Fueled Recession Fears
As CCN.com reported, the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates seven times since Trump took office in January 2017. It raised them four times in 2018 alone. In contrast, the Fed increased rates just once during Barack Obama’s eight-year presidency.
The most recent rate hike in December 2018 caused the stock market to tank and stirred media hype over an impending recession.
Trump-haters have trashed him for criticizing the Fed’s frequent, overzealous rate hikes, but even his critics agree that the Fed overstepped its bounds.
Paul: Bitcoin Can Prevent Recession
Amid criticism from all sides, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently suggested that the central bank might cut rates in the near future.
However, Ron Paul and others say the Fed should let the free market dictate interest rates instead of manipulating them.
Paul has been consistent in his scorching rebuke of the Federal Reserve. In fact, Paul has been calling to “end the Fed” for at least the past decade.
Interestingly, Ron Paul is a former bitcoin critic and vocal advocate of the gold standard. In December 2018, Paul had an epiphany and declared that the only way to avoid a Fed-created recession is to let people use alternative currencies like bitcoin and to exempt crypto from taxes.
