Lack of Gold Standard Hurts U.S. Economic Growth, Forbes Says

LAS VEGAS--The absence of a gold standard in the United States is hindering economic growth and leading to ill-fated monetary policies, former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes told more than 1,000 attendees during his keynote speech at the FreedomFest conference here.

Forbes confidently reinforced his past advocacy for a return to the gold standard to help stabilize the falling U.S. dollar, reassure foreign investors of the value of U.S. government bonds and spur federal spending discipline. He pointed blame directly at the U.S. government by telling attendees that such intervention is needed because “Big Brother” is “destroying the dollar.”

Since 1971 when the United States left the gold standard completely, the value of the dollar has gone down 80%, Forbes said. The U.S. government maintained a gold price of $35 per ounce until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed price.

That move followed a U.S. government retreat from the gold standard on June 5, 1933, when it ceased backing the value of the U.S. dollar with gold. Creditors previously could demand gold as payment starting in 1879 when the U.S. government first adopted the gold standard. The one exception occurred during World War I when the U.S. government imposed an embargo on gold exports.

Right now, the Federal Reserve Bank is one of the “least accountable” agencies in the world, Forbes said. The reality is that monetary policy “intimidates” people or just “bores” them,” he added.

“If you want out of a date, start talking about monetary policy,” Forbes said.

If the United States had maintained the average rate of economic growth that it had with the gold standard, the U.S. economy would be $7-$8 trillion dollars larger than it is now, Forbes said.

“It is very easy to spend when you can conjure money out of thin air,” Forbes said.

“Money is simply a measure of value,” making transactions easier than in the old days when society used barter arrangements to conduct business, Forbes told the attendees.

Without the gold standard, the United States is suffering from “crony capitalism,” Forbes said. An estimated $1 trillion dollars has been “wasted” by the U.S. government on subsidies, he added.

For example, electricity in Germany is three times what it is here in the United States, Forbes said.

“People feel that the link between effort and reward has been eroded,” Forbes said.

Inflation, which is nudging upward in the United States, is a “tax,” Forbes said. He questioned how Fed policies that are causing rising inflation and boosting the cost of living for a typical American by $1,000 a year are helping the economy.

With the current quantitative-easing policies, the Fed will keep its bloated balance sheet, Forbes said. The Fed’s action is taking money out of economy and giving it to a wasteful federal government – hurting small businesses that need to be healthy to create jobs, he added.

“The big banks are now simply hand maidens of the federal government,” Forbes said.

“When we had a gold standard, there was little currency trading,” Forbes said. “Now, volume in currency trading is high.”

Gold’s fixed measure of value is “impervious to Washington’s manipulation,” Forbes said.

Governments would need to spend “more responsibly” with the gold standard, Forbes said. Reinstatement of the gold standard would create an economically “healthier society,” he added.

I point out again that when we hear that gold (or silver) is so much an ounce, we are being given a ratio — almost always the case with the media friends of paper money — precisely opposite of how it SHOULD be expressed.

As this was written, gold is NOT, for example, $1,400. an ounce, rather, the “dollar” has been reduced to a value of 1/1,400th of an ounce of gold. If the “dollar” is inflated to 1/6,300th of an ounce of gold, folks would get a more meaningful picture of what the politicians and the Fed have done to the currency.

Another interesting stat is that before the vote-buying politicians and masters of the universe at the Fed pulled us off a precious metals standard back in the day, the dollar was equal to 1/35th of an ounce of gold. And it has been calculated that the “dollar” of today is equivalent to less than 1 cent when measured against the dollar of 1913 or so BEFORE the Fed and the beloved INCOME TAX.

Sadly, it will ever be thus and it seems we must relearn those painful lessons every few generations.In case some of you hadn’t noticed, class is now in session.

(Above comments added 11-2009/ Dick Bachert)

Submitted for your consideration while standing by for FURIOUS FLAMES from the FRIENDS OF PAPER MONEY!

I wrote this a number of years ago when things were NOT going well with the economy. Trust me: They WILL get ugly once again as man -- or certain men -- cannot resist playing god. We continue to violate the universal, immutable laws of economics at our great peril.

A prime example of how men play god is this bit of madness:

FDR took the U.S. off the gold standard in April 1933, and by summer he was setting the gold price every morning from his bed. His Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, reported that at one point the president ordered the gold price up 21 cents. Why 21, Morgenthau asked? Roosevelt replied, because it’s 3 x 7, and three is a lucky number. “If anyone knew how we set the gold price,” wrote Morgenthau in his diary, “they would be frightened.”

There is STILL plenty about which to be frightened today.

History proves that EVERY house of cards eventually comes down. And the higher the card house, the harder the fall when it finally comes. And when it does, the more freedoms we will voluntarily surrender to "restore order." It was the Founders' concern about this historically valid problem which prompted their attempt -- now ignored -- to keep American "money" sound and honest.)

And I certainly recognize that NO system of commodity backed paper “money” is foolproof (and we now seem to be led by some of history’s biggest fools) how’s the current UNBACKED system working out for you?

Dick Bachert 1998

*************** 2009 UPDATE: I have noted with interest that I have lately been getting far, far fewer flames from the paper money lovers out there. And when, over 4 years ago, I began ranting about the incredibly stupid financial devices (derivatives, mortgage backed securities, etc.) being created to hoodwink the greater fools out there who were snapping up these things, I could count on about half the responders to tell me I was too simple-minded to understand these highly complicated financial “products.” I guess all those really bright financial guys are too busy now washing car windows at traffic lights to post here.

And I’d ask you to consider that when gold and silver come up in the news, the talking heads fall into the old, establishment fostered trap of measuring the precious metals in the rapidly failing paper when they SHOULD remark that it is the metals that are – within the narrow confines of fluctuations caused by their uses as industrial commodities – holding THEIR value and it is the paper that is INFLATING. (The classic example is that around 1900, one could buy a fine man’s suit for one ounce of gold. YOU STILL CAN!!!)

A fiat money system of the sort we are now painfully watching collapse creates a FALSE world of FALSE feelings of well-being and elevated lifestyles. During the expansion phase of such a system, those living under it spend or borrow more than they should, have more children than they can afford and, at the national level, come to believe they can afford to allow a score of millions of illegals to come here for educations, welfare payments, medical care, etc. They reject the immutable and universal economic realities and embrace what my old friend, the late Tupper Saussy, called “the IDEASPHERE.”

Now that the inevitable economic catastrophe is upon us, how much fun is it to watch the idiots in congress who triggered this thing scramble for cover by blaming everyone else? Not much!

The only folks who feel good now are the Hank Paulsons and Obamaites of the world who are in the process of conducting what may prove to be one of the largest raids on the REAL wealth of this nation – our labor and real property – ever witnessed.

And I’ll readily concede that while a precious metals backed money system ain’t perfect, ASK YOURSELF HOW THE FIAT MONEY SYSTEM NOW COLLAPSING ALL AROUND US HAS BEEN WORKING FOR YA’?

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." -- Judge Learned Hand, 1944

DB 3/2009

* * * * * * * * 2011 UPDATE:

AND THE HYPOCRITE OF THE CENTURY AWARD GOES TO…

Alan Greenspan – who was an early follower of Ayn Rand and outspoken advocate of the Gold Standard at that time in his life -- stands out as the person most responsible for the American addiction to cheap toxic credit, the nearly complete destruction of the middle class, displaced industry, a ruined economy, and insolvent banking system. Greenspan said, "We have at this particular stage a fiat money which is essentially money printed by a government. It is usually a central bank which is authorized to do so. Some mechanism has got to be in place that restricts the amount of money which is produced, either a Gold Standard or a currency board, because unless you do that, all of history suggest that inflation will take hold with very deleterious effects on economic activity. There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly believe that we did very well in the 1870 to 1914 period with an international gold standard." The deleterious price inflation has arrived. The USEconomy risks depression. Greenspan actually questioned openly whether the United States really needs a central bank.

Dick Bachert

2/26/11 The Forgotten History of Money

This is the fascinating story of the efforts by certain of the Founding Fathers to prevent the economic distress we find all about us today. It is also a sad story on the basis that modern, "sophisticated" Americans have abandoned the corrective institutional mechanism that remains in place to this day. As you read it, think about a world with many fewer S&L, banking and political scandals and economic problems now considered the norm.

"Blood running in the streets. Mobs of rioters and demonstrators threatening banks and legislatures. Looting of shop and home. Strikes and unemployment. Trade and distribution paralyzed. Shortages of food. Bankruptcies everywhere. Court dockets overloaded. Kidnappings for heavy ransom. Sexual perversion, drunkenness, lawlessness rampant. The wheels of government are clogged, and we are descending into the vale of confusion and darkness. No day was ever more clouded than the present. We are fast verging on anarchy and confusion. (George Washington in a 1786 letter to James Madison, describing the effects of fiat paper money inflation then ravaging America in the pre‑Constitutional period.)

"The annihilation (of the paper money) was so complete that barber‑shops were papered in jest with the bills; and sailors, on returning from cruises, being paid off in bundles of this worthless money, had suits made of it, and with characteristic lightheartedness, turned their loss into frolic by parading through the streets in decayed finery which in its better days had passed for thousands of dollars." (Contemporary writer, Breck, 1786)

"Paper money polluted the equity of our laws, turned them into engines of oppression, corrupted the justice of our public administration, destroyed the fortunes of thousands who had confidence in it, enervated the trade and husbandry, and the manufactures of our country, and went far to destroy the morality of our people." (Peletiah Webster, 1786)

At the drafting of the U.S.Constitution, there were many "Friends of Paper Money" present. On August 16, 1787, when the discussion arose on Article 1, Section 8, the proposed wording was this: "The Legislature of the United States shall have the power to...coin money...and emit bills of credit of the United States."

A hot argument ensued on the power to emit bills of credit, which is another way of saying "printing paper money".

Here are the actual words James Madison wrote describing the debate in his diary: "Mr.G.Morris moved to strike out *and emit bills of credit.* If the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary; if they had not, unjust and useless.

MADISON: Will it not be sufficient to prohibit the making them a tender? This will remove the temptation to emit them with unjust views. And promissory notes in that shape may in some emergencies be best.

MORRIS: Striking out the words will leave room still for notes of a responsible minister which will do the good without the mischief. The monied interest will oppose the plan of the Government, if paper emissions be not prohibited.

COL.MASON: Though he had a mortal hatred to paper money, yet as he could not foresee all emergencies, we was unwilling to tie the hands of the Legislature [Legislature = Congress]. MR.MERCER:(A friend to paper money) It was impolitic...to excite the opposition of all those who were friends to paper money.

MR. ELSEWORTH thought this was a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which had been made, were now fresh in the public mind and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new Government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost anything else...Give the Government credit, and other will offer. The power may do harm, never good.

MR.WILSON: It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered, and as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources.

MR.READ thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the Beast in Revelation.

MR.LANGDON had rather reject the whole plan than retain the three words *and emit bills*". The motion for striking out carried.

Historian George Bancroft later wrote: "James Madison left his testimony that *the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender, either for public or private debts, was cut off.* This is the interpretation of the clause, made at the time of its adoption by all the statesmen of that age, not open to dispute because too clear for argument, and never disputed so long as any one man who took part in framing the constitution remained alive."

(Bancroft – founder of the U.S.Naval Academy at Annapolis among other accomplishments – wrote a book on this very subject entitled “A Plea for the Constitution of the United States: Wounded in the House of Its Guardians.” During WWII, FDR – a serious friend of paper money – ostensibly to supply the war effort, ordered the printing plates for many historical books smelted. Bancroft’s book – found after a diligent search by friend Tupper Saussy -- was among them. A photocopy of one of the remaining originals can be found here

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=bE7PP1ePQwgC&dq=Constitution+wounded+in+the+house+of+its+guardians&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=iiJ1_2B_IA&sig=ByRM-kVMIDAs4S5OttEqkCXGm8s#PPA4,M1 )

ROGER SHERMAN(1721‑1793)should be a name familiar to every American. As familiar as Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Adams. He is the only man to have signed all 4 documents surrounding the formation of the United States of America: The Continental Association of 1774, The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation and The United States Constitution. He was a Judge of the Superior Court in New Haven, Connecticut, serving that office with distinction from 1766 until 1788. He served as Treasurer of Yale University from 1765 to 1776. He was renouned for his high intelligence and unswerving honesty and was described by John Adams "as honest as an angel and as firm in the cause of American independence as Mount Atlas." He served in the U.S.Senate from 1791 until his death in 1793.

Why is Roger Sherman*s name unfamiliar? HE WAS AN ENEMY OF PAPER MONEY!! In 1751, Roger Sherman and his brother William sued James Battle for paying a debt to their shop in New Milford, Connecticut, in depreciating paper currency. Over a period of 15 months, Battle had charged "divers wares and merchandizes" amounting to 129 pounds of what Sherman assumed were pounds of Connecticut "Old Tenor", a stable currency whose value were well‑preserved by taxation taking it out of circulation. But Battle assumed the debt was denominated in pounds of ever‑depreciating Rhode Island currency, tendered in same, and the Shermans took a beating in the payment and sued for recovery of loss by depreciation. The Shermans lost when Battle argued that he was merely following the accepted custom of the day. In 1752, Sherman wrote his book "A Caveat Against Injustice or An Inquiry into the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange" indicting UNBACKED PAPER MONEY.

It was this experience that Sherman brought to the Constitutional Convention and prompted him to rise on August 28,1787 and propose new, more restrictive wording to Article 1,Section 10. The standing version under consideration was worded this way: "No state shall coin money; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal; nor enter into any Treaty, alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of Nobility." (From Madison’s Notes of the Convention) "Judge Sherman and Mr. Wilson moved to insert the words *coin money* the words *nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts* making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S. Mr. Sherman thought this a FAVORABLE CRISIS FOR CRUSHING PAPER MONEY. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it." Mr. Sherman*s and Mr. Wilson*s motion was quickly agreed to and became the supreme law of the land.

Some additional quotations to ponder:

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from a want of honor or virtue so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation" (John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787)

"I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else, a legal tender." (Thomas Jefferson)

"You have been doubtless been informed, from time to time, of the happy progress of our affairs. The principal difficulties seem in great measure to have been surmounted. Our revenues have been considerably more productive than it was imagined they would be. I mention this to show the spirit of enterprise that prevails." (George Washington in a letter to the Marquis de LaFayette, June 3, 1790 AFTER the United States Constitution prohibited unbacked paper money at Article 1, Section 10)

"Since the federal constitution has removed all danger of our having a paper tender, our trade is advanced fifty percent. Our monied people can trust their cash abroad, and have brought their coin into circulation." (December 16, 1789 edition of The Pennsylvania Gazette)

"Our country, my dear sir, is fast progressing in its political importance and social happiness." (George Washington in a letter to the Marquis de LaFayette, March 19, 1791)

"The United States enjoys a sense of prosperity and tranquility under the new government that could hardly have been hoped for." (George Washington in a letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, July 19,1791)

"Tranquility reigns among the people with that disposition towards the general government which is likely to preserve it. Our public credit stands on that high ground which three years ago would have been considered as a species of madness to have foretold." (George Washington in a letter to David Humphreys, July 20, 1791)

"It is apparent from the whole context of the Constitution as well as the times which gave birth to it, that it was the purpose of the Convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious metals.

These were adopted by a permanent rule excluding the use of a perishable medium of exchange, such as certain agricultural commodities recognized by the statutes of some States as tender for debts, or the still more pernicious expedient of PAPER CURRENCY." (Andrew Jackson, 8th Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1836)

DESPITE WHAT YOU WERE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, THE HISTORICAL RECORD IS CRYSTAL CLEAR: AMERICA WAS TO HAVE BEEN SPARED THE DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF AN UNBACKED PAPER MONEY SYSTEM. MOST OF THE PROBLEMS WE FACE TODAY CAN BE TRACED TO WHAT ANDREW JACKSON CALLED "THE PERNICIOUS EXPEDIENT OF PAPER MONEY".

History teaches that an "artificial" money creates an equally "artificial" world where the price for some item...even our most popular welfare "program"...can be deferred to future generations (our multi-trillion national debt) or “paid” with a "money" created out of thin air which robs the value from the money we might be unfortunate enough to have in our pockets at that moment (inflation).

And one thing you must remember about inflation is that it is not an "equal opportunity" destroyer: Those first in line to get their hands on the new money rolling off the presses (the modern friends of paper money) have a chance to spend it before it loses more value. The little people (that’s us, folks!) farthest down the line are the ones who feel the fullest effects of this destructive process.

And that’s because it was planned that way.

WHY THE POLITCAL RULING CLASS NO LONGER LISTENS TO US!

Among others, Mr. Jefferson warned that the financial disaster we now face would be but one of many problems paper money would visit upon us if we allowed our “leaders” to remove the backing from the currency, to wit:

“When the servants if the people are paid with something other than that which the people themselves have produced (i.e. the real, tangible products of their labors or some fixed and real medium of that exchange), the roles of master and servant will be reversed.”

It was believed by Roger Sherman and a majority of those at the Constitutional Convention that un-backed currency would so damage the fabric of the nation that they ATTEMPTED to prohibit it with these few words at Article 1, Section 10, requiring the states to enforce the prohibition: “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;”

If the people and their states grew inattentive to this matter (and they have!), Jefferson also saw this problem ahead:

In a letter to John Taylor in 1816, he wrote, "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

We have been “…swindling futurity…” for a long time and this is now where we find ourselves. If the government, through its banker masters at the Federal Reserve, can create “money” from thin air, they certainly don’t need ours every April 15th. That annual sheep shearing is simply an attempt to vacuum enough of the excess paper from the system to keep the rest of us from catching on to the biggest theft ring in the history of man. They have now created so much that their attempt is failing and failing badly to a point where all but the dullest among us (Obama voters and his growing cadres of personal and corporate welfare beneficiaries) are starting to “get it.”

If you understood that last paragraph, you can now make the small leap to an understanding as to why the “progressive” utopian welfare state hacks in Washington don’t give a damn WHAT you think. Their power to create all the “money” they need to fuel their infernal machine and fill the gaping maws of enough of those hoards of welfare constituents to assure their perpetual re-election means that they – ready? – NO LONGER NEED YOU! They have become, as Mr. Jefferson predicted, our MASTERS.

That they are taking down a nation and a system that has provided more wealth, safety and abundance to more people than any other in history matters not to them. Failing to grasp the lesson of the French Revolution, they believe themselves to be above the impending disaster.

We’re running out of time to get this increasingly rapacious beast back into the cage from which we have carelessly allowed it to escape.

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