Ron Paul: The Fed and Congress Must Return to Fiscal and Monetary Sanity

Ron Paul: The Fed and Congress Must Return to Fiscal and Monetary Sanity Leave a response by RonPaul.com on March 21, 2013 The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will continue its easy credit policies – to no one’s surprise. But its statements on fiscal policy are confusing and contradictory. While the Fed has for several years criticized Congress’ inability to get its fiscal house in order – ignoring its own responsibility in enabling the government’s massive deficits and debt – the Fed is now alarmed about the across-the-board sequestration “cuts.” But the cuts that so worry Bernanke are not even real cuts, as, under sequestration, the Federal budget will still increase by trillions of dollars over the next ten years. The Fed’s third round of quantitative easing amounts to asset purchases of $85 billion per month, yet the federal government cutting $44 billion* over one fiscal year is considered “restrictive fiscal policy” that might slow economic growth and job creation. One month of Fed money-printing undoes more than a year’s worth of sequestration, yet Chairman Bernanke expects us to believe that “monetary policy cannot offset a fiscal restraint of that magnitude.” If $44 billion can’t be eliminated without raising alarm, then getting to long-term fiscal stability, as Chairman Bernanke frequently exhorts Congress to do, can never happen. The Fed, on the one hand, says that the economy needs fiscal stability, while with the other hand it enables profligate government spending. Just since the beginning of the year, the Fed has purchased nearly half of the federal government’s monthly deficits as part of quantitative easing. During QE2, the Fed bought $770 billion of government debt. It has kept interest rates near zero for six years now, giving the government a free ride on the backs of savers and those who have been responsible with their money. The Fed’s power over the dollar enables the government to keep spending and paying its debts with cheapened, devalued, debased dollars. And the American people suffer the consequences of high prices, distortions in the marketplace, and the aftermath of burst economic bubbles created by easy credit. It’s well past time to return to fiscal and monetary sanity. The Fed and Congress should be ashamed. *According to the CBO, the sequester only reduces spending by $44 billion this year, with the rest of the reported $85 billion in cuts taking place in future years. Source

Tense race finds Obama firewall holding

y ALEXANDER BURNS | 11/6/12 4:14 PM EST Updated: 11/6/12 10:48 PM EST Early election returns and exit polls held encouraging signs for Democrats Tuesday night, as President Barack Obama appeared to be holding steady or slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in the largest presidential swing states. Romney, whose aides predicted a runaway victory of over 300 Electoral College votes in recent days, was deadlocked with Obama in the essential states of Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida — all of which he must win in order to capture the presidency.

2011

Incendiary- The Willingham Case

Ron Paul for President

While President Obama defeated each potential Republican contender, Mr. Paul, who announced the formation of his presidential exploratory committee late last month, came closest to defeating the Democratic president. Mr. Paul, the favored candidate of the tea party movement, trails the president by only seven points (52 to 45 percent) in a hypothetical general election showdown.

Operation Geronimo

The Compound being watched.

President Obama and his administrative and national security officials receive updates about the attack on Osama bin Laden



(CNN) -- As special-operations military troops prepared for a firefight about 7,000 miles away, President Barack Obama entered a room in the Washington area early in the afternoon on Sunday to follow along.

Like a page plucked from a Hollywood screenplay, Obama and other principal coordinators for the mission that killed Osama bin Laden convened in order to remotely monitor the situation, John Brennan, the U.S. counterterrorism chief, said in a White House news briefing on Monday.

Obama arrived after many of the mission's leaders had assembled there, but the president joined before the attack on bin Laden's mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan, began, Brennan said.

"We were able to monitor on a real-time basis the progress of the operation, from its commencement, to its time on target, to the extraction of the remains," Brennan said. "We were able to have regular updates to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation."

The White House and Central Intelligence Agency didn't have access to a live audio feed, but they were able to tap other communications, a U.S. official told CNN. There was some live video, though the official declined to elaborate on the nature of that footage.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the CIA had led the bin Laden attack operation, and officials on the 7th floor of the agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters had access to live video of the raid, the report said.

Brennan declined to say whether they had access to a video feed or radio communications. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Google, Apple and other Internet companies have mastered the process of streaming live video from events to the world. But that task would get much trickier if the cameramen are also carrying rifles and broadcasting from an untested, faraway locale.

After Obama had signed off on the operation, CIA Director Leon Panetta gave the official order around midday Sunday for the operation to commence, the Times reported.

"We have rid the world of the most infamous terrorist of our time," Panetta said in a statement Monday. "We gave President Obama and his team accurate, relevant, timely intelligence -- providing the information and insight they needed at key points as this mission developed."

The CIA had been tracking bin Laden and provided intelligence to the White House saying the agency was "confident" the terrorist leader was inside the Pakistan compound, Brennan said.

"It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here yesterday," Brennan said. "The minutes passed like days, and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel. That was what was on his mind throughout."

Shortly after taking office in 2009, Obama had directed Panetta "to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda," the president said in his speech Sunday night. "We give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who've worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names."

However, Obama apparently does get to see their work as it's being carried out.