The Federal Reserve uses protecting the free market as one of the biggest reasons for its existence, but former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) knows better.

“That’s the argument they use,” he tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck. “You know, bank runs and all this, and the Fed was established to stop all that.”

“And you can stop it, but it’s because they drifted away and they never fully obeyed the Constitution that nothing other than gold and silver would be used as legal tender, and that was a little too sloppy,” he continues.

“You wrote ‘End the Fed,'" Glenn responds. “What would you add to that today?”

“You put a rule in there that says that the Federal Reserve cannot buy government debt,” Paul answers. “That’s the whole thing. Then they get into manipulating and then they get into this astounding thing. They’re central economic planners by manipulating interest rates.”

“That’s where the real problem is, the economic planning that they have and the pretense that they know what is there,” he continues. “They talk as if what they’re saying is authentic, and it’s always, ‘What can we say to calm the people’s nerves?’”

While the Federal Reserve buys the government debt, American citizens are left to suffer if they fall into a money pit they can’t get out of.

“If you or I go overboard, and we spend $5 million and all of a sudden the banks won’t loan us any more money, we have to declare bankruptcy. We have to get another job or quit spending,” Paul says. “Governments don’t do that.”

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