Print 3 million and take 1 million for yourself
Political ·Monday April 13, 2009 @ 01:29 EDT (link)
This is a speech by Ron Paul given in 1979, but oh so apropos (Pillars of Prosperity, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008):
Congressional Record—U.S. House of Representatives
May 31, 1979
Mr. Speaker, David Ottaway, in writing about Idi Amin's economic atrocities, discussed with a salesman for a British banknote firm who personally negotiated a contract with the former dictator of Uganda for printing up 2 million Ugandan shillings worth of 100 shilling notes. "At the close of our conversation," said Mr. Ottaway, the salesman "gingerly asked how he was to be paid."
"Print 3 million and take 1 million for yourself," Amin angrily retorted.
Inflation, the expansion of the money supply, helped destroy Uganda's economy, along with other forms of government regulation and interference. Amin doubled the money supply in his last two years as dictator, flooding the country with paper money. Prices naturally skyrocketed.
Idi Amin is no longer oppressing the people of Uganda, but his monetary policies live on, in more moderate form, at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.
We will never have stable prices until we stop flooding our country with paper dollars, and solving—or trying to solve—our problems by printing more money. It will not work for us, any more than it did for Idi Amin.
Books finished: The New Market Wizards.
