Ron Paul - Goldfinger?

The golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. In the 1964 James Bond Movie, Goldfinger, an international financial terrorist attempts to take over the world financial system by destroying American gold reserves stored at Fort Know with a nuclear bomb - a foreboding yet imaginative plot, but very messy and not to likely to succeed. What if you came up with a lucrative plan, not so grandiose, reasonably legal, and conducted in plain view, with the full complicity of the disgruntled American voter, what would that look like?

The convention for Politicians who aspire to high office is to place their financial assets in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. It would be an apparent conflict of interest for a politician to vote on appropriations for the Defense Industry while personally owning shares of Boeing or Grumman Aerospace. Dick Cheney, followed this practice in 2000, when he sold his interests in Haliburton, in order to run for the Vice Presidency. Senator Bill Frist, sold his interests in HCA, prior to voting on health care issues. Nonetheless, both these men faced intense scrutiny, and criticism for these sales and the timing of these sales.

Fast forward to 2007, Ron Paul, the Iconoclastic Populist, is running for the Presidency. For years, Ron has advocated a return to the gold standard, and the end of the Federal Reserve Banking System. The United States effectively ended the gold standard for its currency during the depression of the 1930s. Economists universally credit this move as part of a package of reforms which restored the health of the American market system. The historic prosperity of America since that time, despite calamities of all description and magnitude, attests to the wisdom of this policy.

Financially speaking, there is no reason that little markers of arbitrary value made of precious metals should be any more legal tender than any thing else. In the final analysis, gold coinage puts no clothes on anyone's back, cures no disease, feeds no hunger, nor provides any other essential element of the good life. Our financial system of floating values for all commodities and products makes what people want and need the ultimate determiner of worth. The backing of the dollar is not now gold, it is the sum total of all the goods and services that America produces - the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.

What do you produce in your life? Haircuts? Pizzas? Cellular Telephones? DVDs? Houses? Clothes? Medicine? Why should your product be any less valuable than gold? After all, do you not have something that your neighbors want? How much gold do you produce? Are you really wanting to return to a financial system which will make those who produce and hoard gold more powerful than Oil Sheiks? By all indications, Ron Paul is, and he is sitting on a pot of gold pushing for this to happen. Ron Paul's financial disclosure 2007, shows mostly precious metals and commodities investments. Paul reports owning shares of infamous gold hedger Barrick Gold.

You can find Paul's financial disclosure form, listing his investments, here: http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/pfd2006/N00005906_2006_Pres.pdf

Ron Paul, himself, is as surprised as anyone by the breadth of support that he has garnered. From Anarchists to anti-Zionists, Ron Paul attracts them all. Mr. Paul knows that this is no winning coalition, and will never lead to the White House. And even if it did, the chances of achieving such a radical move are next to none. So why run? To advance the national dialog, or to be the self fulfilling type of prophecy that makes even a stopped clock right twice a day? Since the Ron Paul Revolution began, the dollar has fallen and gold has risen by 40%. That is a nice day's work, if you can get it. All the while that Ron Paul is laughing on his way to the vault, the kooky minions are slicing off checks to keep the anti-American rhetoric flowing.

Am I the only person in America who believes that it is fundamentally dishonest to the attack the Dollar? the Dollar supports your paycheck, your IRA, your savings account, and anyone who attacks it, is attacking you and your house. No other responsible public official would ever presume to instigate a run on our National Treasury. Such a move is intrinsically selfish and anarchistic. And deserving of more scorn than a Dick Cheney hunting trip.