How will you stay on top of your finances with the coming economic uncertainty? Your best bet is to continue listening to The American Monetary Association Show as your host, Jason Hartman, discusses cutting edge financial topics with experts in the field.

For example, this episode’s very special controversial guest is Mr. Howard J. Ruff, author, financial adviser, founder and editor of The Ruff Times Financial Newsletter. In 1975, Howard began publication of The Ruff Times, a groundbreaking financial advisory newsletter. Since then, The Ruff Times had more than 600,000 subscribers – the most read financial advisory in the world. In addition to Ruff’s successful publication, he also authored the mega-selling financial book, How to Prosper During The Coming Bad Years. This highly-praised product reveals acclaimed wisdom and insight on economics, politics, and investments in easy-to-understand terms. Listen in as Jason and Howard divulge sharp and proactive methods to maximize your return on investment in the years to come.

Narrator: Welcome to the American Monetary Association’s podcast. Where we explore how monetary policy impacts the real lives of real people, and the action steps necessary to preserve wealth and enhance one’s lifestyle.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the podcast for The American Monetary Association. This is your host, Jason Hartman and this is a service of my private foundation, The Jason Hartman Foundation. Today we have a great interview for you, so I think you’ll enjoy it. And comment on our website or our blog post. We have a lot of resources there for you, and you can find that at AmericanMonetaryAssociation.org or the website for the foundation which is JasonHartmanFoundation.org. Thanks so much for listening and please visit our website and enjoy our extensive blog and other resources there.

Start of Interview with Howard Ruff

Jason Hartman: With great pleasure, I’d like to welcome Howard Ruff to the show. He is a very well-known author. His most recent book is How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st Century. And that was published in 2008. Howard, it’s great to be talking with you personally.

Howard Ruff: Well, it’s great to talk to you. I can hardly wait to hear what I’m going to say.

Jason Hartman: Me too. So, tell us about your take on the current economy. It’s pretty disgusting what’s going on out there with the money printing, and the bail-outs, and the rewarding the wrong behaviors, and the moral hazards, and so on and so forth. What is your take on that?

Howard Ruff: You’ve got it all just right. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that I’m viewing with alarm like I’ve never done in my entire career. The problems that we face amount to socialism. We used to be creeping towards socialism, now we’re galloping towards socialism. And I see Barack Obama, I hate to say this, but if he isn’t the anti-Christ, he’ll do until one comes along.

Jason Hartman: He is definitely moving us toward a very big government, a lot of draconian rules…

Howard Ruff: Well not just that. The thing to remember about it is the definition of socialism. Socialism is government owning or controlling the means of production. All socialist economies do and that’s the definition of the term.

Jason Hartman: Sure.

Howard Ruff: And now he’s taken over the automobile industry, he’s taken over Wall St, he’s taken over the insurance industry, and what he’s done is given them money with strings attached. He claims he’s not going to make decisions for them. That’s a bunch of baloney. What he’s doing is he’s already fired the CEO at AIG insurance companies, and said we can’t pay these guys’ bonuses. Even though they’re working for a dollar a year, plus bonuses he isn’t really the best producer they have. And he’s step by step taking total control. And I was interested that Barney Frank, congressman of the house said that he thought we could control the salaries and pay out the bonuses of companies even after we receive money from the government. And that’s what scares the wits out of me.

Jason Hartman: That is very scary.

Howard Ruff: There’s strings attached to money, and government has big strings attached to all this money. But remember what Rob Emanuel said when he became Chief of Staff of The White House: He said you have a lot of crisis that’s being wasted.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, and that’s never missed the opportunity to use this crisis to promote our agenda.

Howard Ruff: For example, when they did that 700 some odd thousand, or 700 some odd billion bail-out package it had like 40 years of what the liberals in congress have wanted for 40 years. And nobody had a chance to read it before the vote. They finished at about 11 o’clock at night. The night before they had to vote no one, not one person who voted for it had read it before. Not one.

Jason Hartman: You know what’s interesting about that, is that I remember Obama during the campaign promising that he would put everything up on a website for five days so the American people could review stuff before votes were cast, so they’d have time to react and write to their representatives and so forth. And these kinds of things were just kind of rushed through. But Bush is not free of blame either. Bush and Paulson, between the two of those guys, they were a little less socialist but it started to get pretty big in terms of the size of the government under Bush too.

Howard Ruff: Well what we have to remember is that most of this has been approved by democrats who initiate a lot of the stuff, but backed up by weak kneed republicans who were just basically enablers. So years ago, remember when Papa Bush said that, read my lips: no new taxes? He said that to me on my TV show – I’m the guy he said that to. When he did I decided to abandon the Republican Party. I’m much more in tune with the philosophy they profess but I’m not in tune with the way they practice it, and consequently I resigned noisily from that party and publically, so I know what I am. I’m not a libertarian because I don’t like their philosophies, I’m certainly not a liberal. I’m more in tune with the state of republican philosophy. But they don’t do what they say they’re going to do. They just don’t.

Jason Hartman: Well when you say… Bush got really vilified for the read my lips: no new taxes thing when he ran the second time, but… and I’m talking Bush Sr. of course, but it wasn’t really he who promoted more taxes, he just caved in. He didn’t stand up to the big government liberals, right?

Howard Ruff: Well, actually he endorsed it.

Jason Hartman: Oh, he did? Okay. Well it must have been a trade off in plea bargain then.

Howard Ruff: Yeah, he actually endorsed it. And that’s why I resigned. I didn’t want anything more to do with a party that would do that.

Jason Hartman: Yeah. Well tell us your philosophy on why controlling the means of production and increasing… to me taxes are just a contemporary version of slavery, and government has to tax a little bit so you don’t have anarchy, but it’s been blown so far out of proportion with what’s going on nowadays. Give us your sort of philosophical underpinning for that, if you would. And then let’s take this into how one reacts to this, how one invests, how one protects themselves.

Howard Ruff: You mean defending the definition that I gave you?

Jason Hartman: Yeah.

Howard Ruff: I don’t have to defend the definition. Every economist, you go down the brass roots, they’ll all agree with that. That’s the definition, the actual true definition of socialism. And every socialist country, there’s been a lot of them. The Soviet Union was socialist. The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic, The Nazis. That’s the national socialist party ridden with socialism. All of these things, our government eventually being given control of the industry. Now, since the Obama administration has taken control of the automobile industry, they’ve taken control of pretty much the insurance industry, and they’ve certainly taken control of Wall St. And I don’t see that as anything but the purest definition of socialism. The only hang up is that they find that they have to control people with behavior. And so all socialisms eventually turn into totalitarian link that tells you what to do

Jason Hartman: That’s the link I’m looking for, actually. I didn’t mean for you to go into that much detail on it, but what does this really mean to people? Because nowadays this is all being soft pedaled as though, maybe the government can run it better. These are crazy statements to be making.

Howard Ruff: Right, but when has government ever run anything well except maybe the wars?

Jason Hartman: And that would be debatable, too.

Howard Ruff: Yeah, well let me tell you this: One thing that happens under socialism is they throw a lot of money around. In fact, today government knows they’ve got a recession, they know they have a deflationary period, they don’t know anything to do with that except for throw money at it. In the process of throwing money at deflation and recession, there’s laying the foundation for inflation coming around the corner.

And so we’re just a few months away from all this money they’re printing turning into inflation. Inflation is at all times, in all places a monetar