In my latest reading of Ron Paul's End the Fed, Ron Paul
argues that the Federal Reserve's easy credit encouraged recklessness
and thus contributed to the financial crisis. This may overlap with
Paul's point that artificially stimulating economic investment when
people have not been saving is a disastrous policy, for how will people
buy things when they do not have the money? And, regarding credit,
there comes a time when people have to pay their creditors. What
happens when they are unable to do so? An example: Those who bought
houses that they could not afford.
Ron Paul argues that one way
that the Federal Reserve encouraged recklessness was by increasing the
money supply in an attempt to reduce interest rates. So is Ron
Paul for high interest rates? My impression is that he is not.
Granted, he's against reckless loans being made out to people who may
not have the ability to pay the money back, but he seems to believe that
it's better for interest rates to come down after people invest the
money that they have saved. For Paul, investment is good, but people should invest money that they have saved. Then, interest rates can come down.
I think that Ron Paul's discussion sensitizes me to how difficult it is to stimulate the economy.
We want for people to spend, for that's what creates jobs. But, when
people are saving, they're not spending right now, and so economic
growth is delayed. But we want economic growth right now, and thus
there's the push for credit, for people to spend money that they don't
have. That's fine for right now, but what happens when the debtors have
to pay back their creditors and don't have the money?
I think
that there's often a hope that the person borrowing will be able to pay
the creditors back. I'm not talking so much about people who use their
credit cards at the mall, but rather people who borrow money to
start businesses, or who had hope that they would be able to pay back
their sub-prime mortgages because the housing market was good and they'd
make a lot of money on their homes. But there are obvious risks: What if the business does not do well? What if the housing market takes a nosedive (which is what happened)?
I'm
not sure if Ron Paul is against credit altogether. I can't see a
credit-less society really working, at least not in twenty-first century
America. If people can only invest money that they saved up, I
doubt that many people will be investing, for how many have saved up
enough money to start a business? Credit does open up opportunities for
more people. That can help the economy, but it also has the potential
to harm it.
(UPDATE: On page 203, Paul says that he's not against credit but wants
for it to be "rooted in money saved, not money created." I don't know
what exactly he means by that. Perhaps he means that, when people save
money, there is more money in the bank for loans to be made out.)