Ron Paul - Goldfinger?

Talking Down the Dollar for Fun and Profit

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.