RON PAUL IS AS BAD AS I THOUGHT

I noted before that Paul is pretty much a libertarisn loony and this article in the Seattle Times indicates that he's deep into another extremist, Ludwig von Mises.

Struggling economy puts Ron Paul's views in spotlight
Originally published Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 11:11 AM
Special to The Seattle Times

WASHINGTON — For three decades, Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul's extreme brand of libertarian economics consigned him to the far fringes, even among conservatives.

In particular, Paul is a disciple of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian theorist born at the end of the 19th century who contended that government intervention in an economy would fail because free markets were better at allocating resources and fueling growth.

Having lived through Germany's devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler, Mises wrote long before the Great Depression that overgenerous credit policies would encourage excessive borrowing, creating a boom and then a bust.

Mises' ideas became central to what is known as the Austrian School of Economics, which emphasized tight controls on credit and money supply, a strategy that discouraged financial ups and downs but tended to slow growth.