 Some of you may not know this story, but one of Dr. Paul's motivations in running for Congress, of course, was always money and banking, monetary policy. He'd actually been reading Mises and getting interested in gold and sound money. And so when he decided to return to Congress in the 1990s and run again, he actually defeated sitting incumbent that Newt Gingrich and then Governor George W. Bush had gotten to switch parties. A guy named Greg Loffin had become a Republican because they didn't want Ron to take the seat. So Ron beat Greg Loffin in the primary and ultimately got back into Congress in the 1996 election. They asked him, you know, what committees do you want to be on, Ron? And back then it was still called the Banking Committee. Now it's called the Financial Services Committee. So he said, well, how about the Banking Committee? And they said, oh, thanks, please, sure. We'll put Dr. Paul in the Banking Committee because even amongst economists, monetary policy was considered a particularly technical or wonkish discipline. But what they didn't realize was going to happen was just a couple years later, the N. Ron fiasco was going to happen and the Arthur Anderson implosion was going to happen. All of a sudden the Financial Services Committee became one of the hottest committees in Congress and they ultimately produced the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which was a big deal. And so Ron was front and center for a lot of jousts over the years with Alan Greenspan and later Ben Bernanke. And as a subcommittee chairman, he was allowed to have a staffer and so there was nobody who was really closer to the heart of the Ron Paul revolution as it relates to end the Fed and monetary policy than that staffer who is Lydia Mashburn, who has our next speaker. So please welcome her. Thank you, Jeff, and thanks to the Mrs. Institute for inviting me to come speak to you today about this topic. How did Ron Paul make the Fed an issue? As many of you maybe know the joke, economics is considered the dismal science. Well, monetary policy is the obscure dismal science. So how did Dr. Paul make that an issue? As Jeff somewhat alluded to, Dr. Paul's political career really began on the monetary policy question. Again, Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. So what did that mean? Basically, the last vestiges of the gold standard, the dollar being attached to any form of gold whatsoever, Nixon said, we are temporarily suspending that. And as everyone knows, a temporary government, anything, lives with you for a very, very long time. So that's where Dr. Paul said, I got to go do something about this. So how, now he did say sound money then was not a popular topic to campaign on. It's not a popular topic to campaign on even now. But it, as Dr. Paul said, it's an esoteric topic. But he told himself, well, okay, nobody cares about this, but who cares that nobody cares about this? This matters. So he said, so what if it's esoteric? He said, if you care about advancing personal liberty, ending needless wars, or controlling runaway spending, then monetary policy absolutely matters. So Dr. Paul set himself this mission, and I hope I'm not stealing from his remarks later today, but he set himself this mission to talk about that esoteric topic. And it was to educate on this fundamental aspect of freedom, sound money, the money question. So today, compared to even just 10 years ago, I would say maybe not your average person on the street, but a person on the street, they just might know that the Federal Reserve is a central bank. They also might know that those central bankers have something to do with this transitory, not so transitory inflation thing that's going on right now. And then importantly, also there's a small vocal minority that also not only knows the risks, I would say many of you in this room probably, but they also have been looking for a private-centered alternative. And not to give away my punchline, I am somewhat referring to cryptocurrencies, but more on that later. So can we really say Ron Paul did all that, that people know a little bit that we have a central bank and it's the Fed and that it causes problems? I would say even a modest observer, the Fed itself, when he was on the Hill, would acknowledge that Dr. Paul brought the issue of money to the public sphere in a rare and for the Fed a rather uncomfortable kind of way. The two presidential campaigns have a way of doing that. You have this public podium. Dr. Paul knew that using the public podium of the presidential debate stage was one where you could bring topics to the fore for public debate. But even if you do bring up these topics, why does it matter? Why should the public care about it? But Dr. Paul decided that it did matter and it was worth talking about, and his message ended up stirring the public in a way we hadn't seen before. Why did it stir the public? I would say first, it was because it was consistent. Dr. Paul had been talking about the ills of government managed or rather government mismanaged money for the better part of four decades at that point, given his 2007 campaign. Second, it was based in reason or as, where is he? Daniel was saying earlier today, truth is what matters. So the second thing that he did is that it was based on reason and truth. Dr. Paul educated himself. After that, Goldwinder closed, he continued to educate himself. He went and talked to people like Mises and Hayek and Rothbard. I'm really jealous. I would love to have gotten to speak to these people. And he was learning about what is money? What is the role of money in the economy? What is its importance as a tool of economic calculation? And importantly, what are the disastrous consequences when that tool is broken? And so that was part of his message. And then third was timing. You're kind of like a good punchline. The timing is what matters. He was campaigning right as we were entering into what is a classic example of the crack-up boom of Austrian business cycle theory. So his message was well received because people were starting to ask why. Some others might say, never let a good crisis go to waste. In this case, I think Dr. Paul very much did not let a terrible crisis go to waste because he was able to educate people. Now others in this room, maybe John is out there somewhere. I was talking to him at dinner last night, can talk about adventures and escapades on the campaign trail. I think others in this room can also talk about the personal impact that his presidential campaigns had. I know I for one his 2008 campaign. I owe my monetary awakening to that. And also a great deal to YouTube. That was a good bunny hole back then. But now I want to turn to what we did on the monetary policy subcommittee, which is why I'm really here to talk to you today. So Dr. Paul became chairman of this subcommittee called the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee. We used to call it DMP, but DC jargon for you. All the alphabet soup up there. But it really was the, as he told us, it was the only position of power he ever wanted in DC. And that was definitely rare coming from him. But first a little background. Him getting that committee chair ship was a big deal. The leadership at the time when he actually got his first eligibility for it. There were a number of shenanigans they engaged in to try to make sure he did not get that chairmanship. And one of the things I think they actually pulled a member from another committee so that he had higher seniority than Dr. Paul. So Dr. Paul didn't get the chairmanship. And then another time the subcommittee was there and they're like, oh no, Dr. Paul's going to get this. And they merged two subcommittees and all of a sudden there was no subcommittee for Dr. Paul to chair. So it wasn't until 2011, and I have to give a shout out to Congressman Spencer Bacchus from Alabama who said, we're going to stick to the rules, you're going to get your chairmanship, you deserve your tenure, and you're going to end up as chair of the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee. And so from 2011 to 2012 in the 112th Congress, Dr. Paul got to run that committee. And it's the committee that has oversight of the Fed and domestic monetary policy. I think interestingly a couple of Congresses before when they realized Spencer Bacchus was actually going to be a man of his word and let Dr. Paul onto the committee, they said, oh wait, wait. If right now domestic and monetary, domestic and international monetary policy, they're in the same committee. If Dr. Paul's chair, that means he's going to be in charge of appropriations for the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. We absolutely can't have Dr. No in charge of international monetary policy. So they very carefully said, oh well we need to split these two up and that way we can protect our cronyism over here. But while Dr. Paul was out on the campaign at that point getting ready for the 2012 campaign, and he was sharing the message of liberty and free markets, non-interventionist foreign policy. I'm so glad that there's the Ron Paul Institute now. He was out there educating the people. And what's interesting is he was doing the exact same thing in the halls of Congress. I mean Congress members are just people too. They need education too. And so he had one very simple instruction to me as is Doug Zigny as the policy director and Paul Martin Foss who also deserves a shout out. We were his two point people on this committee. And so his one simple instruction to us was educate. It was like, we couldn't hear it enough. Educate, educate, educate. And so educate was the goal of the subcommittee. And so over the course of two years, the subcommittee, we held more hearings in this subcommittee. The subcommittee that was viewed as the red-headed stepchild of all the subcommittees of the entire House of Representatives. So it wasn't just on the financial services committee. No one wants to do monetary policy. It was like nobody wants to monetary policy. So we did more hearings in two years than the previous three Congresses combined. And these hearings were not your ordinary sound bite political theater hearings that most Capitol Hill hearings are. Admittedly Dr. Paul had a lot of fun doing those kinds of hearings. The exchanges with Chairman of the Fed Bernanke were of that line because the Fed has this interesting rule that the chair can only appear before the full committee of the financial services. The chair is too esteemed to appear on a lower committee such as a subcommittee. But during those general hearings, Dr. Paul, one of my favorites is when he asked Chairman Bernanke, is gold money? And Bernanke just sort of stumbled over himself. And then one time he very quickly quipped, so Chairman, have you been to the grocery store lately? And at that time we were experiencing a little bit of inflation. And so it was an interesting telltale of how separated some of these folks can be from ordinary life. But so we then, so the topics that we did on the subcommittee, they again weren't those sound bite topics. We had things like the relationship of monetary policy and rising prices. I think they might need to have this topic yet again on Capitol Hill. We had things like fractional reserve banking in the Federal Reserve, the consequences of high powered money. I have to thank Professor Celerno for being one of the witnesses in that hearing. And by explaining fractional reserve banking in less than five minutes to an audience, it has no idea what you're talking about. And then another one was sound money, parallel currencies and the roadmap to monetary freedom. So let me just say these were very unusual on the Hill. In addition to those hearings, because there was none of that groundwork for the staff, for the members or their staff to really know what to do in these hearings, I don't know what fractional reserve is, I don't know what a parallel currency is. Dr. Paul said I want to reconstitute, he used to do these monetary or rather just these lunches, policy lunches, and he'd invite experts in, usually economists. I love that about libertarian thinking because I'm partial to econ, but I love all libertarian thinking. And he wanted to reconstitute these to help educate members and their staff. I don't know if you guys know in Washington DC, really it's a bunch of 25 year olds running around the show and so they typically have very little econ in their education and they probably have zero monetary policy education. But we reconstituted these groups, we called them our T-talks. There's no sure way to get to a staffer's heart and hopefully their mind, then through free food. So we'd bring them in and we would talk to them about things about, well, what is money? What is the Fed? And why does it matter? And what's interesting is, well, actually I should say the reason why it was so important for Dr. Paul to educate these folks on these issues is Congress has a constitutional responsibility over money, regulating money in the economy or really it's about regulating the amount of money. So we can get into quibbles over how much authority they really have. But as currently interpreted, it means they have oversight of the Fed. How can you fulfill a constitutional obligation to oversee the Fed when you literally don't know what money is and you don't know how monetary policy works? So he's like, we have to educate these folks. This has to stop being the redheaded stepchild if people have to care. So this is where I say I do think Ron Paul really did, he made monetary policy an issue. He made it popular to a certain extent through the campaigns and such. And some might even say populist, I think that was the term Jeff kind of floated about, that that is one of the outcomes too. But to this day, I hear from staffers about how much those hearings and briefings and tea talks and really just simply Dr. Paul's principled approach, it made a difference to them. And I even see it in some of the hearings when Chair Powell is up there. Some, not all, but some of the questions are actually monetary policy related questions. Instead of fiscal policy related questions, which is of course Congress's job, not the Fed's job, but that's what they know, so that's what they ask the Fed chair about. But a few of them, they do actually ask some hard substantive monetary policy questions. And I've seen the thread of staffers and members that have taken that message that started with Dr. Paul and it's carried through to today. So Dr. Paul played a huge role in that trend. Another example is Audit the Fed. Now Audit the Fed for many years was great campaign slogan, if you will. Dr. Paul had introduced it in many Congresses since even his early tenure. In July of 2012, he actually got Audit the Fed passed in the House on an overwhelming vote of 327 to 98. That just doesn't happen on pieces of legislation, especially not ones as controversial as auditing the Fed at that time. Getting to that vote, that was not an easy thing. I could bore you with the ping-pong between our office, House leadership and House parliamentarian about who had jurisdiction over the bill. We ended up with a four-inch binder of legislative history trying to say where should this legislation end up and who gets to talk about it. I think the Mises Institute might have it in their archives now. At least I dropped it off with them. It may be someone may have stolen it and I wish them happy reading. And then we also had, there was also the massive lobbying effort that the Fed pulled out. This is Audit the Fed piece of legislation. We're not like ending the world. We're talking about like just, we want Congress to know what the Fed does so they can fulfill their constitutional responsibilities. The Fed was like absolutely not. They sent their lobbying folks to the Hill in droves. I can't really say droves. There really weren't that many of them, but it just takes a few very energetic people and they would go into all these offices and be like, no, no, no, you don't need to audit us. We're already audited. We're already audited. It's like, yes, your financial statements are audited. This is about a government accountability office audit so that Congress actually knows your operations, not just that some third-party independent auditor can verify that your financials look good to them. This is about operations. But it was a bit of an education campaign even on that where we would have to go in after the Fed would go talk to offices. We would come back in and be like, well, let me remind you what this three-page build really does. It's not too much. Your boss can read it, but let me give you the talking points on it. But getting that vote passed was just a mark of how much that education really, really mattered. And then we get to another part of that though. What matters about that vote is that the members were educated, but also the people started becoming educated. And that is due to the campaign, the public campaigns, the presidential campaigns. It was because of the level of awareness that had developed from that public pulpit that Dr. Paul used. We had people calling their members' offices from across the nation saying, you have to support this legislation. So I know many of you in this room think, call your congressman. That's where things go to die. This isn't always true. So occasionally, do call them. They have very fragile egos. They don't like it when you tell them they're doing something wrong. They also actually really appreciate when you tell them they're doing something nice. Most people don't do that. Do that. If they ever do anything right, call them up. Tell them that. Their staff do take notes on these things and they give them reports to their bosses. So remember, you have a voice here. So just to conclude the story on the audit. Now, sadly, it ended up in, well, not sadly, but it ended up in the Senate where then it sadly sat in what is also known as the cooling saucer of the Senate. One of the friendly terms the House likes to call the upper chamber condescendingly, of course, where it has basically just kind of sat on ice. Despite efforts by another political office holder by the name of Dr. Paul. Appreciate those efforts. But the vote did happen. People cared enough about monetary policy to make it happen. And that matters. So what now? Where does that leave us now? So some say the Fed is bigger than ever. This is literally demonstrably true. It says unaccountable as ever. This is partially true. And it's continuing to benefit Wall Street while sowing the seeds of instability and inflation for the rest of us. So I won't argue with any of that. It does not look great. Dr. Paul even sadly acknowledged that a single congressman can do very little legislatively to advance the cause of liberty. Even holding the DMP chairmanship, it afforded kind of limited opportunity to truly reign in the Fed. As he said, because the House is stacked against us, so to speak, and he's not wrong. But this is where I get back to my punchline. I don't view cryptocurrencies as like a panacea or some sort of cure-all for that will end the Fed. But I do see them, they're a real-world manifestation of what F.A. Hayek called competing currencies. Dr. Paul even introduced a bill called competing currencies back in the day. Competing currencies, it's the idea that private currencies can vie for a spot by providing the best form of money. When I used to say competing currencies, people thought I meant the yen or the euro or something like that. But now I can say something like Bitcoin, and I'd say most of you would raise your hands. You know what Bitcoin is, right? So there's this real-world experiment happening in private free market money. Is it ready to be fully money yet? In places like Venezuela? Maybe. For the rest, more broadly, the jury is still out. But the thing that matters is that it's happening. It's an innovation that's happening in the real world saying we don't need to use the system as it stands. We can create something new. Some of the stuff that Glenn Greenwald was talking about, right? About how you just innovate or when there's an issue you innovate around the problem. And this is why I love liberty and freedom and free markets. When there's an issue and there's a problem to solve, we solve it through markets. We solve it through liberty when we have the option to do that. And that is progress. But this is where I can't let you all off the hook. Monetary freedom, sound money, they're needed. They're needed in a free society. But we only get them if we educate ourselves and each other about what money is and why it matters. And this is what Dr. Paul did for my generation. I think he's still doing it for future generations. And it's a remarkable thing. I want to leave you with one admonition. I was going to leave you with a Mises quote, but you know Mises, he's a little wordy. Instead I've got one from Hayek right now. He said, all those who wish to stop the drift toward increasing government control should concentrate their effort on monetary policy. Thank you.