Posted on 12/19/2015 11:34:12 AM PST by Jim W N
[I]n the CNBC debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz advocat[ed] that the dollar be tied to gold.
The reason monetary policy is so fundamental is that the way we live and progress is through the transactions we carry out with one another countless times a day. Life would be chaotic and our standard of living far lower if weights and measures weren’t fixed–60 minutes in an hour, 16 ounces in a pound and 12 inches in a foot. We assume, for instance, that a gallon of gasoline is the same volume each day.
What most observers don’t understand–thanks to John Maynard Keynes–is that the same concept is true for money: It works best when it has a fixed value. Money makes the buying and selling of things infinitely easier. But when money’s value is unmoored, the economy functions badly. Investors and business executives don’t know what the value of the money will be when it’s time to be paid back–a 100-cent dollar, a 10-cent dollar, etc. Uncertainty always dampens risk-taking. Without robust risk-taking an economy stagnates–and so do people’s standard of living.
For a variety of reasons that have held true for thousands of years, a gold standard works better than any other system, including the no-standard system we have today. The basic reason for this is that the yellow metal keeps its intrinsic value better than anything else on earth.
If Richard Nixon hadn’t severed the dollar’s link to gold in the early 1970s and we had maintained our gold- standard average growth rates, the U.S. economy would be 50% bigger than it is today.
The reeducation effort must start. Kudos to Senator Cruz for bringing this crucial subject out of the closet. Truly, our future well-being and that of the world depend upon it.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
There is no Trump/Cruz 2016.
Bookies should take bets on that, would make a killing.
Why are you so sure of that?
Trump may not win the nomination. No one has voted yet.
If so Fiorina or Carson would be the natural and best choices.
In my mind Ted would be wasting his time, can’t imagine him settling for that.
Your scenario looks like much more of a long-shot than Trump winning and Cruz being his VP. Trump looks like an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination and he has a good chance of annihilating Hillary.
Ted Cruz is golden!
I think gold by itself is too limited, so should be part of a non-renewable commodities standard. The long proposed Strategic Metals and Minerals Reserve.
Importantly, these would include “publicly traded metals”, that we use today:
Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Copper, Tin, Zinc, Lead, Iron (and refined steel of various grades), Aluminum, Magnesium, (metallic) Sodium and Potassium, Antimony, Barium, Beryllium, Chromium, Cobalt, Gallium, Indium, Lithium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Phosphorus, Tantalum, Titanium, Tungsten, and Vanadium.
Added to these are the non-metals, semi-metals, and compound minerals useful in their compound state.
Government controlled and maintained strategic elements can be divided into five categories: platinum-group elements, fission elements, rare earth elements, rare metals, and phosphorus. This would amount to:
Platinum-group elements (PGEs):
platinum
palladium
rhodium
iridium
osmium
ruthenium.
Strategic fission elements, primarily
uranium
thorium
plutonium
Rare earth elements (REEs)
Lanthanide series:
Lanthanum
Cerium
Praseodymium
Neodymium
Promethium
Samarium
Europium
Gadolinium
Terbium
Dysprosium
Holmium
Erbium
Thulium
Ytterbium
Lutetium
as well as
scandium
yttrium, and
typical specie currently maintained by the government.
As you can see, this would be a complex regime on which to base a currency, but a remarkably stable one. That is, the government would obtain and maintain fixed levels of these materials, as well as volatile commodities like oil, helium, hydrogen, and other gases, which would be kept as a reserve, not used except in time of war or embargo.
On top of that, the publicly traded part of the reserve would mostly be under export controls. That is, if you had a large quantity of gold, you might be limited in how much you could export over a period of time. But trading within the US would be wide open.
So fixed reserves at the government level, and a mostly open market for trading. This would be far more stable than just gold, and would actually protect gold owners from wild fluctuations and government seizure, while stabilizing and protecting the value of the currency.
No joke
Why make things so complicated and allow the government the kind of power and latitude it has today, trashing the economy, which a gold standard would help prevent by objectively, not subjectively by the government, fixing the value of the dollar?
Maintaining a constant value for the dollar has great appeal. Adoption of the gold standard is a way to do that.
In the old days, currencies were backed by gold. So we had a great amount of gold stored in Fort Knox. Is it still there? Resumption of an old-style gold standard would be expensive if the gold is gone. Furthermore, I don’t like the idea of storing vast amounts of gold that could be used for other purposes.
Another way would be for the Fed to target gold. Other countries could do the same, or peg their currency to the gold-based dollar. In principle, we could return to a universal world currency based on the value of gold.
I remember when Ronald Reagan had Paul Volker buck-up the dollar, after many years of high inflation. I watched a Democrat Congressman on the nightly news declare that the Fed was created by Congress and could be abolished by Congress. My point is that the Fed is not immune from political pressure.
The Fed does more harm than good. The standard for valuing currency should be fixed, not subject to political pressures of which the Fed is certainly subject, and on some external, objective value, and gold is probably the best standard.
I agree with Milton Friedman that the Fed should be replaced by a computer that uses a mathematical model that would keep the quantity of money increasing at a steady rate. (He proposed this money be issued directly by the government (Treasury) and ending fractional reserve banking powers for the banks).
I like Friedman’s monetary rule to grow the money supply to correspond to growth in the real economy. Still, someone has to administer it. The Treasury, like the Fed, can be pressured by politicians.
Fractional reserves, hence money creation by banks, just seems to be in the nature of banking. Basically, I put money in the bank, take some out, some remains in the vault, and some is lent out. There is a double-counting of the money lent out because the borrower thinks he has it, and so do I! I don’t see anything nefarious in this. If I remember it right, Jimmy Stuart explained it well in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
If the law simply stated that the mathematical formula required the quantity of money to be increased at a steady rate administered by the Treasury, then it would be much simpler to call out the Treasury if they monkeyed around with the formula or failed to achieve that steady monetary growth. Again, the watchdogs are the American People who need to have an elementary understanding of this stuff so the politicians don’t pull the wool over their eyes.
I like the idea in principle. But as they say, the devil is in the details. In this case, the exact wording of the law.
Nothing’s perfect but it would sure be a lot better than what we have now - runaway Feds with no accountability at all.
Because, like it has always been, the government would only be partially in charge.
For example, plutonium will never be used as a form of currency in the market. However, as a Reserve metal, it *could* be traded with allied and sensible foreign powers in exchange for something we need. And for such a trade to work, the things traded would both have a value, and paper currency could be used as a token substitute for the things in themselves.
However, it is not practical or realistic for the government to hold vast reserves in iron and steel, copper, silver and gold, zinc, aluminum, etc. So they would stay in the marketplace. This balances the reserves side of the economy very well with the “velocity” of money.
That is the strength of an economy is not just based on its reserves, but in how many economic transactions happen within it each day. The civilian side of the strategic metals and minerals reserve is all about velocity.
Trump is not a conservative.
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