Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul said the dollar is overdue for a sharp decline in the face of runaway debt.
In a new discussion on his YouTube channel, Paul said the reason central banks and even private citizens are increasing their gold reserves is because confidence in the U.S. dollar is waning.
Paul, who calls himself a constitutionalist, said the dollar's existence is absolutely temporary, just like most fiat currencies.
He said that since the Bretton Woods system (a 1944 agreement between the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan to establish a new monetary order centered on the US dollar), some people have foreseen the ultimate demise of the US dollar.
“One thing I know for sure is that the dollar is not going to last indefinitely. It’s been around a lot longer than it should have been. Like right now, the interest on the national debt, the federal debt, is expected to be a trillion dollars in a very short time. That used to be a lot of money. But at the current rate, the interest alone is going to be trillions of dollars.
That’s why anybody with an ounce of common sense, an ounce of economic knowledge, an ounce of intuition would say, “This can’t go on any longer.” But of course, the people who really understood this were against the whole system from the beginning, even from Bretton Woods, and they knew it was coming.”
The liberal icon said replacing the dollar with a new supreme currency would be a long, drawn-out process, but attitudes towards the greenback were already changing.
“Certainly, attitudes and language have changed. Central banks are buying gold, people are buying gold, people are negative about the dollar. But for all the faults of the dollar and our policies, getting rid of the barriers between a reserve currency like the dollar that is so dominant in so many ways, and removing it and bringing in a reserve currency to replace it, is a long way off.”