[Harrison Bergeron]

"...your touching naivete."

We've agreed and sided with each other on way too many important issues to flirt with argumentum ad hominem.

Call it "naivete" if you will, but one cannot help but note the following:

• All of the "economists" arguing for the dismantling of the Federal Reserve and the resumption of the Gold Standard simultaneously advocate the liquidation of all federal government assets and the handing over of central banking responsibilities (the gawddamn keys to the vault) to the politicians in Washington. This contradiction fails any sanity test yet devised - except maybe those still administered in Havana or Pyong Yang.
• I've yet to visit a "Gold Bug" website that doesn't try to justify their position with endless Y2K-like hype and forecasts of calamitous societal collapse.
• Behind every "Gold Bug" website, there seems to be a precious metals retailer or a subscription offer for a conspiracy theory newsletter.

And quoting Lenin? Come on now! I can't even take that as sincere sarcasm. The Soviet Union didn't exactly line the public toilets with gold (hell, they couldn't even stock them with toilet paper!) - the Soviet Union sold it's gold in the capitalist commodity markets to keep it's corrupt regime from collapsing to dust while Western "paper" economies flourished and continue to do so.

[Deuce]

All of the "economists" arguing for the dismantling of the Federal Reserve and the resumption of the Gold Standard simultaneously advocate the liquidation of all federal government assets and the handing over of central banking responsibilities (the gawddamn keys to the vault) to the politicians in Washington.

Name two.

[headsonpikes]

Well, I still say it's naive to trust the government to manage the money supply honestly.

Under certain circumstances, it can be done. For instance, the HKSB managed Hong Kong's money for decades without scandal or inflation. Of course, the HKSB was a public/private sort of thing.

I think you're flirting with the 'ad hominem' argument when you mock monetary sceptics as believers in madcap conspiracies, or shameless snake-oil salesman of PM collectibles.

Read Franz Pick. The destruction of national curencies he writes about is all too real. The monetization of debt is the inevitable outcome of allowing socialistic deficit financing to dominate our financial markets, which has already happened. That's why government bonds are 'certificates of guaranteed confiscation'.

I don't know when the music(Greenspan's money pump) will stop. I am not a believer in predictive technical analysis, nor have I any inside knowledge as to the course of world political events.

Nevertheless, I do know this: Someday the music will stop; there will be insufficient chairs to sit in, and most of the people will be left with dud tickets.

That's the lesson of history. That, and the fact that governments will lie, and twist and spin until the very end. That's another lesson of history.

I expect NO improvement in the ethics of government; that's why I'm a conservative.

Peace. ;^)