“‘The Ron Paul bill is incredibly dangerous,’ said Mishkin, who is now a Columbia University professor, in a Bloomberg Radio interview. ‘It is remarkable the kind of attacks that are occurring on Fed independence.’…

“Paul’s bill ‘would be very dangerous in terms of promoting inflation,’ Mishkin said. ‘If you make the central bank beholden to politicians on a short-run basis, you get very bad outcomes: high inflation and less of the ability to deal with shocks like the ones we had recently.'”

***
“Without missing a beat, he took a swing at Republicans, too.

“‘Another group,’ he told the crowd, thinks you can’t be trusted to make your own decisions. ‘You might end up smoking, drinking or gambling,’ he said. ‘You might have to tolerate people. They might have religious values that are different . . . sexual (orientations) that are different.

“‘But we’ll let them do it!’ Paul shouted, as the crowd yelled in support. ‘The solution . . . is freedom of the individual . . . and respect and confidence that does work.'”

***
“No one thinks Ron Paul is going to lead the GOP, let alone be president. He’s 74 years old and just too…out there. He is an obscure guy who waited patiently (if not quietly) for the cycle of history to come back around his way, and finally it did. We have been arguing about money, credit, and banks since the first days of the republic. Paul is a bargain-basement Jefferson for our time.

“Still, the GOP needs to study Ron Paul, and learn. No one has better captured the sense of Main Street outrage over secret insider deals and Wall Street bonuses. No one has been more consistent about sticking to core conservative values—including the one that says the government shouldn’t spend more money than it takes in. If the GOP is going to appeal to independent voters, it has to confront its own corporate allies. ‘Republicans need to find a populist edge again,’ says Craig Shirley, the author of Rendezvous With Destiny, a new account of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. ‘Reagan spoke to the guy who thought he was being screwed by big business, by big government, by the big media.’ The good doctor, of all people, is showing Republicans the way. What they need is a candidate who embodies the spirit of Ron Paul. Just so long as it isn’t Ron Paul.”