As gold hits a succession of all-time highs and the euro struggles for mere survival, Paul said debt overloads at the base of the recent currency trends can be traced directly to the US central bank.

"The Federal Reserve behind the scenes has the power to create money out of thin air. It's very bizarre," Paul said. "They can bail out their friends and let the people they don't like fail, and create a trillion dollars or more out of thin air in order to prop up some companies at the expense of others ... It's absolutely bizarre and, yes, the American people right now I think are waking up to it."

Paul linked the disruptions to the departure in 1971 from the old Bretton Woods global currency system. He said he has been anticipating the surge in gold as confidence in currency wanes, and after the Bretton Woods collapse.

"This is the unwinding of a system," he said. "Until we replace it with something else you're going to continue to see this."

But Paul predicted that the system will be changed as more and more people begin to see its fundamental flaws.

"The gold surge recently has people discovering they're really printing money," Paul said. "They're just kidding themselves and kidding the American people that the Fed can keep doing what they're doing, because the economic laws will bring this to an end and probably in the not-too-distant future."