This is a Cato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown.

Republican congressman and two-time presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to audit the Federal Reserve,

arguing that Americans need to know more about the Central Bank,

especially given the dramatic increases in the size of the bank's balance sheet.

He spoke at the Cato Institute June 24,, 2009. The full event is available at Cato.org.

Thank you very much. It's a real delight to be here and of course I'm pleased to come here and

of course I'm pleased to come here and discuss the subject that fascinates me and has been an interest of mine for not a couple years but

quite a few decades. Matter of fact it was the monetary issue that first got me

interested in running for Congress back in the 70s and some of you here

may even remember the 70s and they were rather hectic if you don't remember

you probably have read about them and they were very hectic and I was fascinated with the fact

that the Austrian free market economists predicted early on in the 60s that the

Bretton Woods arrangement would never never last and it failed and then that led into

chaos of the 70s but on a lark I thought I would speak out and run for Congress and there was a little bit of concern by my wife about this

because she considered it a dangerous thing to do.

And I couldn't understand that.

And to her, the danger was that I could end up getting elected

but I guaranteed or that that couldn't happen because I was going to be talking about

you know the Federal Reserve and the Federal Open Market Committee,

and who cared about that.

But she was more right than I was on that.

But the 70s were hectic, and there was a cry, even even at that time to know more about the Federal Reserve.

...