Posted on 03/28/2008 3:19:49 PM PDT by DivaDelMar
Seventy-five years ago this month Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States. Within days after swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution, through a Presidential Proclamation he closed the U.S. Mint to gold. Recall that the Mint had been established by the Constitution to protect the people’s right to sound money.
Roosevelt had been elected on a platform of sound money. Barely in office, he reversed himself. He grabbed the gold of the people, marked up its value, leaving Federal Reserve notes in the hands of the people that were to lose 95 percent of their value during subsequent years. They stand poised to lose their remaining value before long.
That experience left behind a moral trauma that returns to haunt us 75 years later even if the establishment, the media, as well as academia, want us to forget the anniversary. They will not succeed. Roosevelt’s chickens will not let them. It has taken the chickens 75 years to come home to roost. Come home they will with a vengeance. The past 75 years were a period of unprecedented turbulence in the financial markets. Yet never during those 75 years has the nation faced a graver monetary crisis than it is facing now. The banking system of the country threatens to seize up. The credit system is facing a violent collapse.
You will hear a lot of ad hoc explanations of what has happened, from subprime mortgages to loose Federal Reserve monetary policy to profligate government fiscal policy. However, one explanation you will never hear from the estabishment, from mainstream economics, or from the media. They will never ever mention the real culprit, the irredeemable dollar.
The tendency of virtually all businessmen, legislators, jurors, and even pastors to go with the tide is thoroughly established. Perhaps such men confuse position and power with wisdom or with competence in fields where they are not competent. As it stands, not one of our political leaders, judges, not one captain of business is competent in the field of money. They do not understand that a monetary crisis, such as the one threatening the irredeemable dollar right now, could totally wipe out its value. It is abundantly clear that the United States is in a most serious trouble as it can no longer produce the goods necessary for survival, nor can it buy them in the world’s markets, in a high degree because of its use of irredeemable currency. Worse still, in consequence of embracing irredeemable currency we have unprecedented dishonesty in government. Standards of dishonesty in government spreads like cancer throughout the nation, as support is given by unwise men to the use of such currency.
It is difficult to think of an unsound monetary practice that has not been embraced in some manner since 1933 by our modern John Laws of finance. The 18th century Scottish adventurer John Law should have felt thoroughly at home among the latter-day adventurers at the helm in the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
When the U.S. Mint was closed to gold in March, 1933, by Roosevelt and the country embarked upon the sea of managed currency, a very large number of individuals and organizations urged a prompt return to the gold standard (which, believe it or not, included the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Advisory Council, 37 members of the faculty of Columbia University, and 710 members of the American Economic Association, to mention but a few).
The question arises as to what has become of those opposing voices in the intervening years. Why, some were silenced through bribe and blackmail. They were simply corrupted by a political movement which they found inexpedient to oppose. The upright individuals among them, on the other hand, were silenced through attrition and death. They were not allowed to pass on the torch to the next generation. All knowledge about gold money was systematically purged from university curricula and from institutes of advanced studies, replaced by a claptrap of pseudo-mathematical bunk.
Of course, one may expect groups, usually controlled by expediency, to shift their position with the changing political tides. But there is no valid defense that can be offered for men who pretend to be scientists and who adjust their so-called principles of science in accordance with the changes of political fashions, or invent fraudulent differential equations purportedly describing the behavior of money in the hands of the people.
The monetary policies of the advocates of irredeemable currency have in the main been those of charlatans. Those who are passing themselves off today as monetary economists either have not understood the lessons of the past; or have been willing to junk them in the interest of expediency, for such personal gains as they may expect to realize for parroting the official propaganda line.
A deep, searing corruption has afflicted monetary science during the past 75 years, comparable to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, now defunct. The only apparent difference is that opponents of the enfant terrible of Soviet genetics, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, were carted off to the Gulag Archipelago, never to be heard from again. Still, it may take many decades of painful effort to overcome the damage caused by Lysenkoism, American style, that has expunged the once world-famous and respected American monetary science from the map. The well-being of our nation, nay, of the whole world, has been seriously undermined by this affliction. Whether the scientists who know the lessons of the past and the prescriptions suggested by evidence accumulated over centuries can do anything of importance to correct this sad state of affairs remains to be seen. The reception of the candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul does not leave us with a great deal of hope in this regard.
In his book Hell Bent for Election (Garden City, N.J., 1935) James P. Warburg quotes from a campaign speech given by Roosevelt in Butte, Montana, on September 19, 1932, as a basis for appraising the man who would violate his pledge on a matter as important as the people’s monetary standard:
“Remember that attitude and method - the way we do things, not just the way we say things - is nearly always the measure of one’s sincerity.”
This self-indicting speech was omitted from the Published Papers and Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt compiled by Samuel I. Rosenman, as was another speech given by Roosevelt in Brooklyn. I quote Warburg:
‘On November 4, 1932, Mr.Roosevelt made this striking statement:
“One of the most commonly repeated misrepresentations by Republicans, including the President, has been the claim that the Democratic position with regard to money has not been made sufficiently clear. The President is seeing visions of rubber dollars. This is only a part of his campaign of fear. I am not going to characterize these statements. I merely present the facts. The Democratic platform specifically declares: ‘We advocate a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards.’ That is plain English.”
That statement could only mean, if it meant anything to the millions of people who voted for Roosevelt, a gold standard currency. Is there any defender of the irredeemable dollar, even among those who try to convey the impression that the majority of people wanted to abandon the gold standard in 1932, who has the moral courage to refer to these speeches? Roosevelt further said:
“The businessmen of the country, battling hard to maintain their financial solvency and integrity, were told in blunt language by President Hoover in Des Moines, Iowa, how close an escape the country had had some months ago from going off the gold standard. This, as had been clearly shown since, was a libel on the credit of the United States… No adequate answer has been made to the magnificent philippic of Senator Glass the other night, in which he showed how unsound was this assertion. And I might add that Senator Glass made a devastating challenge that no responsible government would have sold to the country securities payable in gold if it knew that the promise, yes, the covenant embodied in these securities, was as dubious as the President of the United States claims it was.”
I quote Warburg:
‘On March 12, 1933 - a week after Roosevelt had become President - the United States Treasury issued $800,000,000 of obligations payable “in United States gold coin of the present standard of value” - the same covenant above referred to by Roosevelt a few days before he was elected.
‘Additional securities were issued shortly thereafter bearing the same covenant.
‘On May 7, 1933, President Roosevelt in a radio broadcast to the people announced his intention to repudiate this covenant.
‘And on June 5, 1933, the covenant was abrogated by Congress.
‘The point is not whether we agree or disagree with Roosevelt’s judgment or reasoning. The point is that if he had such a conviction in regard to the gold clauses and intended to act upon it, it would seem that the people had the right to know about it before they were asked to vote.’
The U.S. Mint was reopened to gold after the hiatus of the Civil War and Reconstruction, on January 2, 1879. In celebrating the event General James A. Garfield stated in an address delivered in Chicago:
“We shall still hear echoes of the old conflict, such as the ‘barbarism and cowardice of gold and silver’ and the ‘virtues of fiat money’. The theories which gave them birth will linger among us like belated ghosts, but soon will find rest in the political grave of dead issues…”
Garfield warned that the ‘periodic craze’ of fiat paper money might sweep over this country from time to time. The force of the present episode of craze has apparently never before been experienced by our people. The end of this great disease is not yet in sight. If past experience provides any worthwhile lessons, then the ultimate consequences of our failure to understand the nature of this craze promise to be extremely painful, involving the greatest monetary and economic devastation the world has ever seen.
Orval W. Adams, one-time president of the American Bankers Association, in his article Inflation - The Termite of Civilization wrote in 1956:
‘Open the Mint to gold. Gold is a gift to the world from an all-wise Creator. There is no substitute. There will never be any. Without gold as a base for national and international exchange, civilization could not have emerged from its barter period of the Dark Ages. Gold is the only insurance against ruthless politicians debasing and corrupting the world’s exchange and money systems of a free people. I repeat, gold is a blessing from an all-wise Providence to prevent the tragedy that follows a debased, corrupted and politically managed medium of exchange. The gold standard is the automatic watchman on the tower of the government of free men, to guard against the poison of totalitarianism entering the bloodstream of sound money.’
On many an occasion was the gold standard gleefully, albeit prematurely, buried. One such occasion was the ’funeral oration’ before the Chamber of Deputies in Nazi-occupied Paris, delivered by one of the highest-ranking functionaries of the Nazi party. He declared ’with deep inner satisfaction’ that ’the gold standard is now as remote from the realities of life as the philosophy of the French Revolution: Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality of men…’
When Roosevelt confiscated our people’s gold and forced them to accept irredeemable bills of credit in exchange, the purpose was to provide the government with liberty to do as it pleased with the product of other men’s labor, while depriving people of the liberty to insulate themselves from government arbitrariness by converting the products of their labor into gold if they so desired. In doing so Roosevelt opened wide the door to government tyranny, which has shown itself in wild government spending, heavy taxation, radically depreciated currency, a huge national debt, much socialization and a high and increasing degree of government management of the economy, even in the suspension of civil rights.
Today a lot of people celebrate the advent of $1000 gold. In their festive mood people are liable to forget an ominous consequence of this important milestone. It is the fulfillment of Roosevelt’s design to deprive people of the liberty to shelter the fruits of their labor from the claws of the government by converting their property into gold. At $1000 an ounce, not many people can purchase gold to protect the fruits of their labor against confiscation.
$1000 gold is a milestone - on the road to hell.
Earth’s first real civilization evaluated everything in terms of cattle. Gold was a commodity like any other commodity, and was counted out in cattle.
I beg to differ.
With gold, there is a finite quantity....we may not know quite how much we will harvest but its supply is ruled by reality. With gold, you have a limited supply...so when the demand goes up, you can't create more, but paper money can be printed forever in endless quantities. Throughout history, governments have printed the stuff and until they run out of ink, and they will continue. (Printing too much = inflation)
If you look any one of the paper bills in your wallet and read what it says on there, you will realize that your paper dollar is an IOU from the government.
Bottom line: paper money can be created....like mad, whereas gold cannot.
There are way too many people that think gold has value to class it with paper "money". Gold and is true money because when you hold it, you're not holding someone else's debt.
If things go bust you can eat cows. Ever try eating gold?
Knew an old guy who'd had a really good harvest of tulip bulbs in 1942 or so in Nederland ~ in Walcheren Island (Middelburg).
Next thing you know there was a European famine, and then the military broke the dykes to drown the German army in that area, and he was living up in the roof.
He'd sell you a tulip bulb for a 1 caret diamond.
BTW, tulip bulbs are edible and he was selling them to the hungry.
If things go bust you can eat cows. Ever try eating gold?
Knew an old guy who'd had a really good harvest of tulip bulbs in 1942 or so in Nederland ~ in Walcheren Island (Middelburg).
Next thing you know there was a European famine, and then the military broke the dykes to drown the German army in that area, and he was living up in the roof.
He'd sell you a tulip bulb for a 1 caret diamond.
BTW, tulip bulbs are edible and he was selling them to the hungry.
Got cash?
We had the same sort of experience with real silver coins that we bought about nine years ago. We sold some recently at an amazing profit over what we paid for them.
Hah . . we also bought some more silver coins that we kept in a leather bag and my husband used to like to inspect them. Then one night, he placed the bag on a table beside the trash can in our bedroom. Evidently, the bag was inadvertently pushed into the trash off the crowded table top. We paid $1,500 at the time for that bag of silver, and there’s no telling what it would bring today. Maybe someone at the landfill who needs it will find it someday. He still hasn’t learned his lesson about clutter, which drives me nuts - but, oh well.
Anything that can die (perish) is just about the worst store of value imaginable. There are a lot of things that can thin out the herd or totally destroy it, that have no effect on real money (gold, for example).
"Oh "Honey we're broke....all of our gold just died!"
Livestock are subject to nature's whims and are a constant gamble.
* I grew up on a farm and realize the advantages but it's nowhere near as secure as you might think. I have leaned from experience.
This is why it is best to have many cattle in many villages.
The Wizard of Oz was a parable of populism. The Tin Woodsman was the industrial worker (in the book, the worker had been a man who continually cut off parts of himself while working, and the parts were replaced until nothing human was left.)
The scarecrow was the midwestern farmer who was wise but naive.
The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan, the populist candidate who wanted to go to a bimetallic (silver and gold rather than just a gold) standard.
The yellow brick road was the gold standard, and the Emerald City was Washington DC.
Dorothy's silver slippers (they were silver in the book, not ruby) represented the inclusion of silver, creating a bimetallic standard.
Others expanded the allegories, claiming the wicked witches were the east coast and west coast corporate trusts, the munchkins were the ordinary citizens, Oz stood for the abbreviation for ounce, and Toto stood for teatotalers (prohibitionists were a significant part of the silver adoption coalition.)
The premise that Baum was a populist and that Oz was written as an allegory ignores the fact that Baum was a Republican. Direct quote from him when he ran the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer: "We are all members of one great family, the family which saved the Union, the family which stands together as the emblem of prosperity among the nations--Republicanism!"
You must not be up to date on Murphy's Law.
Ask someone who knows what their doing about your "villages" plan.
Well, it would seem that if you had enough lead, you could take as many of the cattle as you wanted in the villages as you travel, and even ‘invite’ the folks who own gold to give you some!
After the danger had passed I'd then have one of my tinsmiths melt that gold down and pour it into little molds, each shaped in the form of a cow.
Bet I could keep the gold itself in a strongbox under guard and pass off little bronze statues of that gold. That way I could buy what I want and keep all the gold anyway. And that thanks to the cows I so smartly pastured in so many villages all across the country.
Diversification of a portfolio frequently pays the highest dividends.
Chuckle. I think it’s getting late!
Wow - that was one expensive lesson in reducing clutter! Good luck with the rest of your investments!
Interesting thread.
I don’t care whether it’s gold, cattle, houses, or companies — they all equate to the same thing, some one’s time and labour in its aggregation/creation. You don’t find gold lying around on the street, someone had to find and collect it, assay it for purity, and get it to a marketplace. That is what gives it value.
You mentioned eating that gold, muawiyah? Let’s see you eat one of your cows. You don’t just walk up and pull off a steak; you have to kill it, clean it, skin it, and carve it. Time and labour — no different. But at least with gold there’s not as much mess to clean up, or worry about where to put the balance of the meat to stop it spoiling.
Oh, another similarity — they both have to be cooked. The gold gets smelted, the cow gets roasted. Bon appetite! :^)
bttt
read later
There’s nothing wrong with cattle as money, or bricks, or anything else that is durable, has value as a commodity—something that satisfies a real human want. Gold fits that description—it is chemically incorruptible, has utility in industry, art, etc., costs something to find and refine, etc.
Gold happens to be particularly suitable for use as money, in addition to its other uses as a commodity.
The fundamental point is—whenever a government slaps marks or ink on something, and forces people to accept it as money with a value in trade that is way out of proportion to its value as a commodity, it is only a matter of time until its value as money sinks to the level of its value as a commodity—precisely because the motives for government to allow this to happen are irresistible. They are counterfeiters who know they can keep out of jail.
The ONLY reason we are off the Gold Standard is that only a tiny minority of the people have ever given fifteen consecutive seconds of thought to the whole issue of money—what money really is, how fiat money is an instrument of larceny, etc. They have no deeper thought about “money” than that it’s that paper with the fancy designs on it.
Like Roe v. Wade, “soaking the rich,” Social Security, etc., our fiat money is a crime committed in broad daylight.
thank you very much, I’d never read the whole version ; what a great quote from Baum.
You are DEAD ON.....
If you think about it further, you realize that the IRS and our tax system really serves one purpose and one purpose only: To contract the money supply.
Stated differently, IF the FED can and does print all the money the government “needs”-—and I use that term loosely-—to pay the bills, why do we tax the citizens? Simply to contract the money supply.....and secondarily, to manipulate the electorate. The dual idiocies of 1913, the sixteenth amendment and the Federal Reserve Act, must be repealed and their progeny dismantled.
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