If you had bought shares of stocks, options, or even futures on Black Monday and kept them through the end of '87, you would have increased your wealth by leaps and bounds. If you gad bought and kept those shares for a few years, you would have become wealthy beyond your dreams. If you had bough gold, in October of '87 and kept it until today, you would finally be about even.
He talks about gold and "other hard assets" being better than paper money. What "other hard assets" is he talking about? You can't go into the grocery store and pay for your food with gold or the deed of your house. You can't use a check against gold stocks or bars of gold.
Then he talks about the American government "creating money out of thin air". That's hyperbolic codswallop! Both gold and money are worth what governments and/or the market says they are worth; no more and no less. Gold was set at $30 an ounces and it stayed there for many decades. Today, it trades at free markets exchanges, where people set the price/worth in open bidding. The fact is, gold has absolutely NO stable, intrinsic value and never has had.
Inflation comes and goes. It was at its highest, when American money was BACKED BY GOLD AND SILVER and we used gold and silver coinage! Panics and recessions and depressions more prevalent then too. In the Depression of 1893-1898, four million were out of world; that's one person out of every five workers.
For as long as coins have been made out of gold and silver and copper, people have "shaved" them and worse. While paper money can be and is counterfeited, there's nothing that most people can do to it, to devalue it.
Do you know where the term "two bits" comes from? It comes from the practice of Americans breaking off two bits from Spanish pieces of eight. And since nobody was all that accurate, when they broke the coins apart, some people were jipped and others got more than they should have.
Now, as to gold and silver backed paper...ever hear of Bryan's famous speech..."CRUCIFIED ON A CROSS OF GOLD"? Obviously, Ron Paul hasn't and doesn't really know why that speech was given.
Ron Paul knows nothing about finance.
If the economy expands faster than the gold supply, then we would have deflation on a gold standard. The history of our country shows just how devastating that can be -- including in the late 1800's.
And in any case, if Ron or anyone else thinks the US Dollar or assets denominated in US Dollars represent a bad risk and/or poor returns (fools), then he or anyone else can sell all of his / their assets and buy gold.
The last gold-bug economist to hold any responsible position (under Ford -- when gold ownership was legalized) was Alan Greenspan. Yes, the same man who is now Fed Chief and has presided over a remarkable period of price stability. During Greenspan's tenure, by the way, gold as an investment sucked.
Between his gold advocacy and his peace alliance w/ Dennis Kucinich, Ron has founded his very own political planet. When someone figures out what black hole he and it are in orbit around, please let me know.
Western Civ has as one of its pillars a sense of inquiry. I certainly hope that the taxing and money creation authorities not take that away and reduce us to despotism. FTR I think the financial shenanigans of Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt deserve a thorough investigation and hopefully a (IMHO) delousing.