|
|
|
|
|
If It's Good Enough For Mickey, Why Not For Paul? Washington
Post
News of a federal raid last week on a "sound money" outfit that is selling "Ron Paul Dollars," reported in Saturday's Post, is generating no end of quips in the blogosphere about what this development says about the Paul campaign's eye-popping recent fundraising success. Wags ask: How much of that record $4.2 million one-day haul that Paul collected earlier this month actually came in the form of dubloons imprinted with Paul's face, not U.S. legal tender? But these jokes may be missing the point entirely. In fact, the lack of confidence that many Paul supporters have in U.S. currency may well be one reason why they are sending so many of their greenbacks to Paul's campaign, and thereby making his outsider libertarian bid for the Republican presidential nomination a force to be reckoned with. For sound-money supporters who fear a coming collapse in the value of the dollar, it makes eminent sense to send a few hundred dollars to the one candidate who is arguing for a monetary revolution, instead of simply watching that money rapidly crumble in value.
As Exhibit A, consider Peter Schiff, a financial adviser and sound-money advocate whose Connecticut firm, Euro Pacific Capital, specializes in investing clients' money in overseas assets to spare them what he argues will be a destructive decline in the value of the dollar followed by major deterioration in the U.S. economy. Schiff, who earlier this year published the investment guide "Crash Proof," recently sent out a "call to action" e-mail to the 60,000 people in his database urging them to send the $2,300 maximum-allowed contribution to Paul's campaign, describing this as one of the most productive uses for their rapidly fading U.S. dollars. "If you are fortunate enough to be one of my clients, writing a $2,300 check should not be a problem. As I have likely made you tons of money over the years, here is an opportunity to donate some of it to a worthy cause. We have made our money by betting against the U.S and betting against the dollar. Giving $2,300 of our winnings to Ron Paul gives us the opportunity to bet ON America for a change. And it's a bet none of us can afford to lose, and the best part about it is that if we all make this bet together we can't lose," Schiff wrote in the e-mail. "My penchant for foreign investments has from time to time caused some of my critics to label me unpatriotic. While such attacks are clearly out of line, using some of our foreign profits to secure the election of Ron Paul goes a long way toward defusing such allegations. If you are not a client and you think $2,300 is a lot of money, it's not. In fact, if Ron Paul is not our next President, such a sum will be practically worthless by the end of the term of whoever is. So what do you have to lose? Just write the check and hope for the best." In an interview today, Schiff said he expects that the federal raid on the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code had added more weight to his argument for giving to the Paul campaign. "The federal government is debasing the currency and then it comes in and punishes people who are doing something to protect themselves," he said. "The fact that these guys would come in and raid this organization shows how much they've got to fear from this. If more and more people start shunning the currency, it takes away from their power." Norfed, which is based in Evansville, Ind., says that in the last decade it has put into circulation more than $20 million in "Liberty Dollars," metal medallions and paper certificates that it says are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho. The group's founder and director, Bernard von NotHaus, says that federal agents seized more than 50,000 copper "Ron Paul Dollars" that the group was selling for $1, in addition to smaller amounts of silver Ron Paul Dollars that sold for $20, gold ones that went for $1,000 and platinum ones that went for $2,000. Agents also raided the Idaho minting company that makes the organization's medallions, seizing the huge pallets of silver and gold stored there, von NotHaus said.
|
||||
