The RPI Challenge

On August 14, 1997, shortly after the Thai baht collapsed on July 2nd, Indonesia floated the rupiah. This prompted Stanley Fischer, then the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and presently Vice Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, to proclaim that “the management of the IMF welcomes the timely decision of the Indonesian authorities. The floating of the rupiah, in combination with Indonesia’s strong fundamentals, supported by prudent fiscal and monetary policies, will...

Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with...

The Iraqi city of Mosul. The Syrian city of Aleppo. Both 'liberated' in recent months from radical jihadist terror groups. But while one anti-terrorist operation has been lauded in the West, the other was fiercely denounced.The very different ways in which the respective 'liberations' were portrayed tells us much about the way war propaganda works in the so-called free world.For the last few days we've been fed triumphant reports on western news media about the 'liberation" of Mosul from ISIS....

During the time that US Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster are reviewing the US military policy in Afghanistan, The New York Times ran a story on July 10, 2017 that exposed a threat that will upend US defense strategy and return it to a bitter past. The Times story was centered around the following paragraph: “Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant...

The neocons and the military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands with glee over profits to be made from Iraqi reconstruction, but that cannot be said of the US taxpayer who must foot the bill, says Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams.After Amnesty International had published a report accusing the US coalition of partial responsibility for mass civilian casualties, Major General Rupert Jones, the deputy commander of the international anti-ISIS coalition, criticized the...

Alliances between nations are military. Without being military, they would be nothing at all. Trade agreements don’t require alliances. World War I wouldn’t have occurred if there had not been alliances — it was built upon alliances. It was not built on trade agreements. It wasn't even built on trading-blocs. In fact, as the WTO (World Trade Organization) has said: In the two decades prior to World War I, a number of tariff wars broke out, usually provoked by the establishment of a new, more...

It is one of the great ironies that the United States, a land mass protected by two broad oceans while also benefitting from the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, persists in viewing itself as a potential victim, vulnerable and surrounded by enemies. In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently predicted that, thanks to the regulations implemented after the 2008 market meltdown, America would not experience another economic crisis “in our lifetimes.” Yellen’s statement should send shivers down our spines, as there are few more reliable signals of an impending recession, or worse, than when so-called "experts" proclaim that we are in an era of unending prosperity.For instance, in the years leading up to the 2008 market meltdown, then-Fed...

Fear and loathing of Russia is all the rage in Washington, D.C., as both liberal Democrats and neoconservative Republicans unite in a campaign to demonize the Kremlin as “the premier and most important threat, more so than ISIS," as Sen. John McCain recently put it. While Hillary Clinton and her dead-ender supporters conjure a Vast Russian Conspiracy to hand the 2016 election to Donald Trump, and the neocons take advantage of this to push their longstanding hatred of Russian President Vladimir...

The past year has been a tough one for the Brussels’ EU political correctness Supremos. First Mr Orbán insisted on going through with a national referendum. How anti-European! Letting citizens vote on issues affecting their lives in their own countries! What a dangerous idea if that ever spreads. Next thing you know women might demand genuine equality and to be taken seriously as human beings. Horror!Last October 2016 Viktor Orbán’s government organized a referendum vote on whether to let the...

The threat of nuclear war has again sharply escalated owing to North Korea’s apparent successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), albeit one that traveled only 600 miles, not the 6,000 miles needed to reach California. Likewise, it was only a two-stage ICBM not the three-stages needed for extended range delivery. And there was no testing at all of the missile’s capacity to drop a guided warhead through the intense heat of reentry without burning up. Nor did this week’s...

A newly announced deal on a ceasefire in southwestern Syria may be an attempt by the United States to save the Syrian rebels from defeat, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Executive Director Daniel McAdams told Sputnik. 'On the Syria "ceasefire" agreement, we need to see the fine print. But I am skeptical that yet another US "ceasefire" proposal for Syria will result in the reduction of violence in that six year war,' McAdams said on Friday. 'It seems whenever the US side experiences...

After the in-your-face Fourth of July “gift” that North Korea delivered to President Trump in the form of an intercontinental ballistic missile test, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see President Trump and the Pentagon retaliate by bombing North Korea. The reason goes not only to Trump’s erratic behavior, especially when teased or taunted, but also because a bombing attack would reflect the Cold War mentality that unfortunately still holds the Pentagon in its grip.I’ll bet that most...