I posted the vid, back when I believed (foolishly) that QE equals money printing.
Ron Paul is stating two things: a fall in oil production and printing of money as the reason for inflation. The former is supply induced inflation, the latter is monetary inflation. The latter ain't true, cause there hasn't been a printing of excess dollars past demand.
The real american economy, the productive economy is starved for dollars. As are the eurozone economies starved for euros. The banksters, however, they're not starved for dollars.
Quantitative Easing is not money printing. It's a financial operation in which financial assets are bought in order to expand the reserves of banks. This operation keeps interest rates low. Low interest rates DON'T produce inflation. Japan has practiced QE (near 0 rates) for more than a decade and saw no inflation, but deflation. That's because monetary inflation appears when aggregate demand rises above output. And many countries are nowhere near their potential output (full employment).
Anyways, you control inflation by fiscal means, not monetary means. Interest is the speed at which new money is created. Interest is a cost on all portfolios, on business and consumption. Imagine what the inflation figure would be, if the US would run its government deficit at 10% interest, instead of near 0.
If for some reasons the flow of oil stops or decreases, you can raise interest rates to 50% or higher and you're still going to have inflation. QE without fiscal stimulus is useless in triggering a consumption cycle.
People won't contract loans, despite the attractive interest rates, until they reach their desired levels of savings. And the only way they can do that, is if the government runs an appropriate deficit. It's far better to have the government spend counter cyclically and have the delevaraging of the private sector happen in a year or two, instead of waiting for it to happen in the course of long decades.
Ron Paul got it only half right.
