Stop blaming corporate greed — The real reason you can’t afford anything is fake money

Sen. Rand Paul (D-KY) recently, and quite uniquely, nailed the true cause of the affordability issue. It isn’t corporate price gouging or other standard, conventional scapegoats — such as greedy corporations, or deregulation, or heavy regulation, or environmental restrictions on “drill, baby, drill.”Prices going up across the board is the “tell” that monetary authorities are degrading the value of the currency. Rising prices — inflation — is always and everywhere a sign of the dollar’s degradation. Which, as Paul recognized during his recent tour of Fort Knox, implies the right cure: restoring dollar stability, the monetary policy that made America great and prosperous.The failure of political leadership to grasp the basics covers the ideological spectrum and has ancient roots. Five hundred years ago, Nicolaus Copernicus, a public administrator mainly remembered for locating the sun at the center of the solar system, wrote an essay titled “On the Minting of Money.” It commences:“Although there are countless maladies that are forever causing the decline of kingdoms, princedoms, and republics, the following four (in my judgment) are the most serious: civil discord, a high death rate, sterility of the soil, and the debasement of coinage. The first three are so obvious that everybody recognizes the damage they cause; but the fourth one, which has to do with money, is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.”The Prussian rulers he advised ignored him. Decline ensued.John Maynard Keynes, the first celebrity economist, observed in his breakthrough work The Economic Consequences of the Peace:“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”Both Republicans and Democrats have debauched the dollar — and here come the “Democratic” socialists! Rand to the rescue! Paul, after inspecting the U.S. bullion depository recently, proved himself one of those “few very thoughtful people,” achieving Keynes’s stature of “one man in a million.”As reported by Benzinga:“‘I visited Fort Knox today,’ Paul wrote on X in his first post about the visit on Monday. He said the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, adding that $100 at the time had the purchasing power of more than $3,300 today.”Bad money is the real snake in the affordability crisis grass. How to fix it? Use good money to drive out bad!Paul reportedly is entertaining a presidential run. All to the good. The gold standard is a sleeper issue… and a big political winner.Candidate Donald Trump — long enamored of gold, who has adopted “a golden age” as a meme — quietly praised the gold standard twice during the 2016 primary season. President Trump, however, has not directed Treasury Secretary Bessent to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, (Democratic) Treasury Secretary John Connally, who conned President Richard Nixon into “temporarily” closing the gold window in the catastrophic 1971 Nixon Shock (the rest of which was properly and promptly dismantled).The results of a poll I commissioned from Zogby shortly after Trump’s 2025 inauguration, as summarized by Jeremy Zogby, reveal a stunning consensus:“About one-third of Democrats (34%) support a gold standard, as do 55% of Republicans and nearly half (47%) of independent voters.… Strong majorities of men (58%), those ages 30-44 (55%), and conservatives (55%) support a return to the gold standard. Next, majorities of parents with young children (53%), born-again Christians (52%), Hispanics (51%), and veterans (51%) all support the return to a gold standard. Furthermore, half of union voters, 49% of black voters, and 48% of suburban voters … support a policy where dollars are defined and legally convertible to gold. Lastly, consider the behavioral demographic Weekly Walmart Shoppers — a bellwether cohort and incredibly diverse, of whom 55% support returning to the gold standard.”How do we cash in that golden ticket with which to win elections, halt price increases, and restore 1980s and 1990s-style roaring economic growth, and let some shrewd candidate ride that into the White House? Use Rep. Jack Kemp’s simple, elegant Gold Standard Act of 1984. OPINION — FROM ‘AUDIT THE FED’ TO ‘TRUST ME, IT’S THERE’: RAND PAUL’S FORT KNOX FUMBLEPaul, may I offer you a campaign slogan… and a plaque for your Resolute desk celebrating your future presidency’s golden solution to the affordability crisis?The Buck Starts Here.Ralph Benko is a widely published political commentator, monetary policy authority, editor of the modern translation of Nicolaus Copernicus’s classic economic treatise, “On the Minting of Money,” and founder of the Prosperity Caucus and the 189,000-follower Capitalist League.