Posted on 12/26/2015 12:25:25 PM PST by Isara
...
So what is Mr. Cruz's "one big problem"? It turns out to be that he's for honest money, ideally a dollar defined in terms of gold. That is, he's got the same problem that dogged those notorious losers like, to name but a few, Geo. Washington, John Adams, Thos. Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Wm. McKinley, Thos. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.
This is a bizarre argument that puts the Huffington Post - the dispatch is by its senior political economy reporter, Zach Carter - in the company of, say, Richard Nixon. It was Nixon who, in 1971, closed the gold window at which America redeemed dollars presented to it by foreign governments. He ushered in the age of fiat money. Huff Post notes that "no country on Earth now relies on a gold standard for its currency."
Not at the moment, at least. Huff Post cites a 2012 survey by the University of Chicago that found among a group of economists none who support a gold standard. But which group of economists? It turned out to be composed entirely of individuals who oppose the gold standard. Another way to state it would be that a survey of economists who oppose the gold standard found no support for the gold standard....
....
This, in any event, is an opportunity for Mr. Cruz - a chance to stand apart from the rest of the Republican field, to side with the American Founders, and to campaign on constitutional fundamentals....
....
After all, it was not to economists that the Founding Fathers delegated the constitutional monetary powers and disabilities. No, it was to the Congress of the United States. That is the constituted body. The Founders understood that the monetary power involves more than the dismal science - there are legal, commercial, regulatory,...
....
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
That was the best and most persuasive argument against reverting to the gold standard I’ve ever seen. You should write a book if you haven’t already.
Actually anybody they understand that gold is just as much fiat as anything else. Gold has NO intrinsic value, it only has the value we give it: fiat. Things with intrinsic value don’t actually make good money, people are too busy using it for food, tools and buildings.
Doesn't that depend on what they (there was a time I would have said "we") set the exchange rate to be? I can't imagine the world would accept the US simply arbitrarily setting the value of $1 at, say, 1/100oz of gold, but then I can't imagine the American people allowing the government to effectively confiscate their gold for cash and then changing the exchange rate, though I've read (not enough) that they did.
>>Actually anybody they understand that gold is just as much fiat as anything else. Gold has NO intrinsic value, it only has the value we give it: fiat. Things with intrinsic value don’t actually make good money, people are too busy using it for food, tools and buildings.
It has no intrinsic value, but it has its own scarcity that generally exceeds the scarcity of everything else in the economy. When money is the only thing in your economy that can be manufactured in limitless quantities, then you have problems.
This is why the government plans for wealth inequality. The Dems and other idiots think that the rich “take” the wealth from us. In truth, the government creates the money to pay for its own inflated programs because it knows that the money will go to people who won’t use it for purchasing anything real. Oh they use some of it, but most of it just sits quietly in the valuation of stocks and real estate.
This is why the horse is already out of the barn and a return to any standard based on a scarce commodity is impossible.
To answer your specific question, it would not be as linear as that. Why? Well, think of it this way. The strength of the economy under the gold standard ...whether you measure strength based on the ability to make monetary policy decisions or based on relative interest rates or based on the overall strength of the currency ...would be SOLELY based on the actual possession of gold. This, in turn, would be based by how much gold is being mined by the country, or by how much gold is being stored in the vaults, or by how much gold is in the country's trade balance with other nations (or, I believe it was either the US or India many decades back ...maybe both ... how much can be confiscated from citizens). Thus, what those that advocate for a return to the gold standard claim to be it's greatest strength (that it is linked to 'real gold') is also it's greatest weakness. The currency, and the economy, is totally dependent on the amount of gold present in the country (meaning, even when the economy is okay and everything else is going well APART FROM a periodic scarcity in the availability of gold in the country, then the interest rates have to go up ....no matter what, since there is insuffient gold).
Which is why I said that the only way we would return to gold is if the global economy collapsed and a new system rose from the ashes. By the way ....that is not an opinion. My saying it is impossible to return to the gold standard under the current system was not an opinion.
Also, I am not debating the merit and demerit of a return to the gold standard. There are some good points made by those who want to return to it, and good points against it. That's not my argument. My main argument is simply to marvel at how politicians will bring up the issue and act like they can make it happen. That is what I was calling 'impossible.'
Or, what I was saying to be tantamount to debating if a Jedi force push is more powerful than Sith lightning, or if Superman is stronger than the Hulk when the Hulk is really angry. Good points can be made either way, but at the end of the day we would be debating impossible things.
Like a return to the gold standard under the current economic system.
And yes, I think Superman is stronger as he'd knock out the Hulk before the Hulk got sufficient angry to raise his strength to Superman level. That's exactly where I place return to gold standard talk from politicians.
Puleeze my foot!
A small fraction of of Cruz's money is from CfG. Beyond that the CfG as of early 2013 is is no longer pro amnesty. They are now neutral. For example they rate Sen. Sessions a 98 out of 100 in their ratings. Cruz's big money donors are not pro illegal immigration
Add to that Trump was pro legalization amnesty for the good ones without deportations at least as late as July 24, 2015. Starting a week later, he become pro touchback amnesty.
Lots of things have scarcity. Most of the world didn’t give a damn about gold until European colonization spread their obsession with it.
At this point in the world of money 99% of it doesn’t even exist. Money is now ones and zeroes in databases, it isn’t made, it can’t truly be tracked or quantified, and most importantly it cannot be limited. As such it cannot be backed. Backing currency became impossible very long time ago. The minute record based banking came into being, when people could have money that had no physical representation, that was merely ledger sheet entries that enough of society agreed had meaning they would exchange goods based on those, backed currency became impossible. it took us until the 20th century to realize it, but truthfully it died in the 16th.
The government “plans” for wealth inequality because in the entire recorded history of mankind there has never NOT been wealth inequality. Regardless of what made money in that time and place, somebody always found a way to have more of it, and somebody always found a way to not have any of it.
Stocks and real estate are the most real things you can buy. You can’t get more real than ownership stake in a definable, limited, entity.
Backed currency is impossible because currency is no longer measurable. Backed currency is a 15th century concept and we’re in the 21st, that ship sailed, sank, and rotted a long time ago.
George Gilmer recently wrote in Forbes about the inherent fault of fiat currency, namely that you cannot have stability in the value of assets when the measuring unit constantly varies in dimension,ie: floating world currencies, pegged at no value other than relative to another country’s fiat. There HAS to be a standard unit by which everything else is measured. Gold works as that metric.
This fraud allows the debasement of everything else, to the gain of Wall Street supercomputers. The currency markets are 200 times the size of stocks and bonds, and comprise a huge majority of Wall Street profits.
They won’t give that up without a fight. They will do their best to destroy Ted Cruz.
“George Gilder”
Oh, no, you're wrong about that.
The hoi polloi can buy lots of stuff with the New Money. It serves perfectly well as a medium of exchange AND it makes banks and bankers rich.
What it does NOT do is serve as a store of value.
Mostly not even paper, as Gerald Celente says, “The dollar is no longer worth the paper it is NOT printed on.”
What ever happened to Celente? I used to see him on FNC, frequently, up until about 4 - 5 years ago. I’ve stopped watching Fox, so that could be it.
Did any of his forecasts come to be?
Clever...and true.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.