Despite the many, um, interesting beliefs he holds (Lincoln is possibly a war criminal because the Civil War should never have been fought, tacit agreement with the tax protestor movement whose members think the income tax doesn't actually exist, isolationism in the extreme), it's not hard to see Ron Paul's allure, and why he has picked up so many frustrated Republican voters. His commitment to fiscal restraint is admirable--for some, so much so that they can overlook the more, um, unique features of his belief system.

Too bad Paul can't talk his way out of a paper bag. In questioning the wisdom of the bailout proposal, he could have delivered a substantive timeline pointing to exactly how past policies made in D.C. led directly to the housing bubble, then its burst. Instead, he delivered some garbled history of Austrian economics and what Ludwig von Mises would have thought of this whole mess.

Interesting? Maybe. Useful? Not at all.

Further, he compounded his fecklessnes by making a complete misstatement of fact when he finally did attempt to say something current. "An asset is illiquid because is isn't worth anything," he said.

Besides there being countless examples of illiquid assets having great value (a business, antiques and other collectibles, a home, a hedge fund holding that has a lock-up period--ok, bad example), in the case of today's mortgage paper--to which he was no doubt referring-- he is precisely wrong.

Such paper is currently illiquid due to fear and because most investors are uncertain as to its precise value, but these assets do indeed hold value even if some of the loans underlying such mortgage-backeds aren't performing.

And in getting this point wrong he missed the chance to make a salient point for once: that current fair value accounting rules which require

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