Texas Representative Ron Paul appeared on CNN’s American Morning today and argued that Washington bureaucrats and Wall Street executives “take care of their own” and accused politicians of making decisions based on significant influence from Wall Street, not by putting the American taxpayer first.
“Very little fraud was prosecuted, and the people who were supposed to go bankrupt got bailed out”, Paul said when asked about pouring taxpayer money into Wall Street firms who may be seeing record profits.
Paul said he is not surprised at the less-than-ideal results of the stimulus and expressed concern over these company’s ability to financially tread water when the next economic downturn roles around. “This is characteristic of the monetary system that we have. This is not a surprise.”
Paul was asked about the need for regulations, and whether or not this situation requires the government to step in. “Regulations have to be on the cause of the problem: easy credit.” Regulations come through bankruptcy, Paul argued, and further linked our bailing out of large Wall Street firms to perpetuating the cause of the problem to begin with and simply extending the hardship that many Americans are feeling.
“If we wouldn’t have done anything a year ago, yes there would be a lot of bankruptcies, but it would be all over now. We’d be going back to work again.” The industry cannot be revived with our current system, he said. We are only playing games.
“None of this is behind us. All we are doing is prolonging the agony.”
Once again Ron Paul says it straight up.