Ron Paul Extension of Remarks on “Every Currency Crumbles” by James Grant
Ron Paul Extension of Remarks on “Every Currency Crumbles” by James Grant
Congressman Ron Paul
Fourteenth District of Texas
Extension of Remarks
Mr. Speaker, it has recently come to my attention that James Grant has made a public warning regarding monetary crises. In an Op-Ed entitled “Every Currency Crumbles” in The New York Times on Friday, June 19, 1998, he explains that monetary crises are as old as money. Some monetary systems outlive others: the Byzantine empire minted the bezant, the standard gold coin, for 800 years with the same weight and fineness. By contrast, the Japanese yen, he points out, is considered significantly weak at 140 against the U.S. dollar now to warrant intervention in the foreign exchange markets but was 360 as recently as 1971. The fiat U.S. dollar is not immune to the same fate as other paper currencies. As Mr. Grant points out, “The history of currencies is unambiguous. The law is, Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
Mr James Grant is the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a financial publication, and editorial director of Grant’s Municipal Bond Observer and Grant’s Asia Observer. He has also authored several books including the biographical Bernard Baruch: Adventures of a Wall Street Legend, the best financial book of the year according to The Financial Times Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending in America from the Civil War to Michael Milken, Minding Mr. Market: Ten Years on Wall Street with Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and The Trouble with Prosperity: The Loss of Fear, the Rise of Speculation, and the Risk to American Savings. He is a frequent guest on news and financial programs, and his articles appear in a variety of publications.