It's three hours into Congressman Ron Paul's Reddit AMA and there are,unsurprisingly,already over 9, 000 questions and comments. Since you probably don't have the time to read them all,here are some highlights for the mining crowd.

Tesla Motors vs. Texas

a very topical question: How do you feel about Texas banning the sale of Tesla cars? Doesn't seem very American or Libertarian.

Flickr Creative Commons image by Kazuhisa OTSUBO

Ron Paul: It's un-American and it's unpatriotic and it's bad economic policy,and it should not be any business of the government what car you can buy.

Some background: The sate of Texas,Capitalist Mecca and linchpin of American oil industry,is not too keen on electric cars. Under current laws,Elon Musk,CEO of Tesla,cannot sell his cars in the Lone-Star state. Governor Rick Perry however has promised to change that.

The Fed

Ron Paul hates the US Federal Reserve – maybe even more than gold investors currently do. He has blamed the Fed for everything from the financial crisis to a weak dollar. He also blames congress for giving Ben Bernanke and Co.control over US monetary policy. In fact,the pivotal event that pushed Paul into politics was when Richard Nixon "closed the gold window" in 1971 – a pretty dumb move according to the Doc.

So without further ado,here is Ronald's most recent rant about the Fed.

Dr. Paul,you have been the most outspoken critics of the Federal Reserve. However,no matter how much I look into your positions on the Fed,something is still a little unclear. Would you prefer to have the Federal Reserve powers returned to the United States Congress and have congress control the money supply and interest rate,or would you rather those powers be left to the free market and have private competing currencies?

Ron Paul: The second. I would allow the market to do it. I would not trust Congress either. But the guidance can come from our Constitution,because it says we are not allowed to print money and only gold & silver can be legal tender and there is no authority for a central bank. But I like the idea of competing currencies,especially in a transition period,because it would be hard to take what we have today and suddenly have a gold standard without some problems.

Source: www.mining.com