Ron Paul may have snuck into the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and slipped on a Bill Clinton mask in the style of Mission Impossible for about 3 seconds:

Ever since we went off the gold standard, which was necessary for economic management purposes, if you look at it, we had a global financial economy, before we had a global trade economy and certainly before we had any global environmental and labor safe guards. And, ever since then, economic inequality has increased.

Mr. Clinton sounds like he agrees that the gold standard was necessary to maintain economic equality in America. But what economic purpose, other than the funding of wars and ponzi schemes like social security, made it necessary for President Nixon to take us off of the gold standard? Mr. Nixon took the easy way out when he depegged the US dollar from gold because it was politically expedient, and 40 years later, we are feeling the implications.

It is difficult to see how continuing fractional reserve lending practices and monetary expansion which goes through a “clearing house” will ever bring economic, and thus social, equality back. The average American, in real terms, gets poorer every year not only because of the banks that lend us money at exorbitant interest rates, but because of the government and Federal Reserve that make the inequality possible in the first place.

Yes, we can blame banking institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan for manipulating stock markets, commodity price fixing, and defrauding investors by selling worthless investments. There should be not only civil repercussions for these firms, but criminal charges should be filed against those involved in fraudulent activity and theft. The banks are not as innocent as some Republican officials and talk show hosts make them out to be. And while Mr. Obama’s Justice Department may have timed recent legal action against Goldman to divert attention from other problems, we fully support such enforcement of the law – if only it wasn’t such a thinly veiled attempt.

It’s obvious that what President Obama and Mr. Clinton are attempting to do is deflect blame from this economic crisis away from their beloved government machine. The US government, in this regard, is no better than the banks that attempt to stealthily steal from unsuspecting investors. Is it not fraudulent for the United States government to promise citizens a retirement package in the form of social security, the investment capital for which they seize by force, only to devalue retiree payments through monetary expansion and inflation? This is theft, any way you slice it, because those in charge of the policies, both legislative and monetary, are fully aware of what they are doing to people.

As we and others have discussed over the last year, government officials – those who were directly responsible for this crisis – will now shift blame wherever they can. The bankers and the Tea parties are the targets of blame and divisiveness today, but make no mistake, when our elected officials and their appointees come under more pressure, and that blame game doesn’t work anymore, they will shift their sites on foreign nations. They will take this country to war and send thousands of our citizens to their deaths rather than admit fault and risk losing their grip on power.

Watch Bill Clinton discuss the economy, gold, Goldman and Himself: