Ron Paul - The End of Dollar Hegemony

On February 15, 2006, Ron Paul made a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives called The End of Dollar Hegemony. It has to do with the end of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, being used as reserves for central banks around the world.

The text can be read here:
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm

Or his speech can be viewed on YouTube in 2 parts. He does not start in Part I till about at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. He is very knowledgable of history and Austrian economics, thus a good education as to a part of how the world really works can be had.

Excerpts and part I:
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Though money developed naturally in the marketplace, as governments grew in power they assumed monopoly control over money.
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Since printing paper money is nothing short of counterfeiting, the issuer of the international currency must always be the country with the military might to guarantee control over the system. This magnificent scheme seems the perfect system for obtaining perpetual wealth for the country that issues the de facto world currency. The one problem, however, is that such a system destroys the character of the counterfeiting nation’s people-- just as was the case when gold was the currency and it was obtained by conquering other nations. And this destroys the incentive to save and produce, while encouraging debt and runaway welfare.
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Excerpts and part II:
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The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement

[There were 2 Bretton Woods Agreements. One in 1944 and one in 1971.]

solidified the dollar as the preeminent world reserve currency, replacing the British pound. Due to our political and military muscle, and because we had a huge amount of physical gold, the world readily accepted our dollar (defined as 1/35th of an ounce of gold) as the world’s reserve currency. The dollar was said to be “as good as gold,” and convertible to all foreign central banks at that rate. For American citizens, however, it remained illegal to own. This was a gold-exchange standard that from inception was doomed to fail.

The U.S. did exactly what many predicted she would do. She printed more dollars for which there was no gold backing. But the world was content to accept those dollars for more than 25 years with little question-- until the French and others in the late 1960s demanded we fulfill our promise to pay one ounce of gold for each $35 they delivered to the U.S. Treasury. This resulted in a huge gold drain that brought an end to a very poorly devised pseudo-gold standard.
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That is until the fraud is discovered, and the foreign producers decide not to take dollars nor hold them very long in payment for their goods. Everything possible is done to prevent the fraud of the monetary system from being exposed to the masses who suffer from it.
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It is an unbelievable benefit to us to import valuable goods and export depreciating dollars.
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Our whole economic system depends on continuing the current monetary arrangement, which means recycling the dollar is crucial.
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