Fed apologists want us to believe that's the only alternative -- as if there was no such thing as a Gold Standard to offer a real path to sound money. A sound dollar - that used to be the platform of the Republican Party. Now, we're fine with inflation - something that used to be the tool of the Democrats. I've heard Rush praising the "booming" housing market - as if 30 percent per year inflation is a good thing. That's out-of-control inflation, and it can only hurt people in the long run. It's nothing to be applauding - but Rush is a parrot for the Republican establishment, not an independent, genuinely conservative thinker.
That's true -- but it didn't stop panics and depressions in the 19th century. We had a depression in the 1830's, we had a big bust when a German bank panic spread throughout Europe and America in the 1870's, and the economy and markets went into the dumps in 1892/3 -- that's why there weren't any dimes minted in 1893, and only five die-test dimes survive from the San Francisco mint for that year (one of them, spent by the mint director's daughter on an ice-cream cone, finally surfaced in Utah some 70-80 years later, much worn but still valuable because of its rarity).
Convertibility doesn't stop the boom-and-bust cycle. I'm a hard-money guy and I wish we were still on a gold or silver standard (the Roman Empire was on a silver standard), but there are certain things that pegged currency valuations just won't do for you. Repeal of economic cycles isn't one of them.
I've heard Rush praising the "booming" housing market - as if 30 percent per year inflation is a good thing.
We don't have 30% inflation, nor anything like it.
.....Rush is a parrot for the Republican establishment, not an independent, genuinely conservative thinker.
That must be why Rush split so cleanly from the Bush Administration on immigration policy. I heard Rush do it on his show last year. Hell, he sounded like an old-timey "lunch-bucket Democrat" from the 1920's, and his advocacy of American labor couldn't have been more forthright it he'd been a UAW shop steward. No, Rush Limbaugh is not a "tool" or "parrot" or anything else, of the guys down at the Yacht Club Wing of the GOP.