Anyone even vaguely familiar with Ron Paul knows that one of his core issues is sound money, which in his eyes, means getting away from fiat currency and back to the gold standard. Paul argues that the ability of the government to “print money of out thin air” is one of the major causes of our present economic crisis.

Many agree, equating fiat currency to another tax, though it’s unseen by most. For example, if you have $20,000 saved in the bank and the Fed injects trillions of dollars into the economy, your money is worth less. It’s that simple. Fiat currency also allows governments to fuel wars among other things. And, coupled with bad governmental policies, have led to our present mortgage crisis.

Fortunately Dr. Paul is not content to sit back and say “I told you so” but instead has continued his attack against fiat currency. A few choice quotes from a recent exchange with Bernanke:

The Austrian free market economists had predicted all these problems would come, and they were certainly correct in everything that they said. . . we’re spending a lot of energy and a lot of money trying to patch a system together that is unworkable. . .Also, this is not new in history. Currencies have failed, financial systems have failed, and generally, to restore the confidence that everybody is talking about, they usually have to go back to a currency with integrity to it, rather than just fiat money.

Read the complete text here and watch a video of the exchange. And check out our Gold Bug t-shirt and the “Austrain Economists” group on Bureaucrash Social started by Sebastian Quick.