Steve Forbes: Link Dollar To Gold Or Face Great Depression II

Washington Examiner ^ | 6-3-2014 | Paul Bedard

[blam]

Paul Bedard
June 3, 2014

Influential financial publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes is out with a new warning that the U.S. faces an economic catastrophe due to the Federal Reserve's loose dollar policy, and returning to a strict “gold standard” is the only way to avoid disaster.

In Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy -- and What We Can Do About It, Forbes blames President Obama's money team for the stagnant economy, high prices, declining mobility and big government.

"[The Fed's] vastly misguided monetary policies are now setting the stage for a new economic and social catastrophe — one that could rival the financial crisis and horrors of the 1930s,” he wrote in the book co-authored by Elizabeth Ames.

Just like many financial conservatives have advised in the past, notably former Reps. Jack Kemp and Ron Paul, Forbes said that economic prosperity can come only if the dollar is linked to gold and not printed willy-nilly at inflated rates.

"The best way to achieve monetary stability: linking the dollar to gold,” he wrote in the book out today. “The Fed should have only two tasks: keeping the dollar fixed to gold and dealing quickly and decisively with panics,” he wrote, according to excerpts provided in advance to Secrets.

Forbes has long been a leading conservative voice on the economy, and his latest book is likely to revive calls for a gold standard.

"The refusal of many in the policy establishment to entertain the idea of a return to a gold standard is based on astounding ignorance about just what a gold standard would mean and how it would work,”

(snip)

[The Duke]

Very astute!

[GeronL]

it is going to be painful either way

The Great Lean Forward

[ßuddaßudd]

Some things need to be broken before they can be fixed . .

[Paulie]

“I’m not sure that the Fed takes its marching orders from the Treasury. I’m not sure the Federal Reserve is part of our government,...”

True, the Federal Reserve is not a branch of the Federal Government. I know many people get that wrong.

But while the Fed is *supposed* to be neutral, it has long since been politicized. The (William McChesney) Martin Fed was the last independent one, with the possible exception of when Paul Volker was Chairman. Of course the Fed doesn't officially take it's orders from anyone, but in reality they do. But then again they don't just bow to U.S. or international authorities for nothing; they make sure to get something in return.