In Des Moines, Iowa, Congressman Ron Paul gave a stark warning: “The world is facing a major, major crisis. I personally believe it’s worse than anything that’s ever existed in the world before.” The Republican presidential candidate delivered his grim economic message on the Iowa campaign trail, warning of a global financial meltdown if drastic measures aren’t quickly taken to get on top of the U.S. debt problem.

“As a physician, let me tell you, what we do with our economy, with our money, the monetary system, with the spending and the inflating, it’s very similar to treating a drug addict by just giving him another fix, not getting him off the drug,” he said to employees of Principal Financial. “The drug of spending and borrowing and printing money and deficit just delays the inevitable.” Dr. Paul said that the US addiction to debt is like an alcoholic with a failing liver who refuses to save himself by changing his bad habits.

The Texas congressman expressed dismay that other Republican presidential candidates have treated the crisis so lightly, supporting fed plans to simply print more money and try to “kick the can down the road.”

He said that, if elected, a Paul administration would eliminate several federal cabinets and cut $1 trillion in federal spending during his first year in office. Some of these cuts would come from his effort to abolish the welfare state, end government bailouts, bringing US troops home from around the world and working to revamp the US monetary system.

“If we do that, we’ll be back on our feet. We might have a bad year, but believe me it won’t be a bad decade or a bad two or three decades like we did in the Depression,” he said. “Yes, there has to be a correction. But a correction is the treatment. A correction can be healthy. Yes, you do have withdrawal symptoms just like an addict has withdrawal symptoms, but they’re not long lasting. We could get down and we could get it over with rather quickly. What we’re doing now is prolonging the agony.”

Congressman Paul, once seen as a long-shot for the Republican nomination, has recently moved into second place in many Iowa and New Hampshire polls.

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