Free Republic

[I]n the CNBC debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz advocat[ed] that the dollar be tied to gold. The reason monetary policy is so fundamental is that the way we live and progress is through the transactions we carry out with one another countless times a day. Life would be chaotic and our standard of living far lower if weights and measures weren’t fixed–60 minutes in an hour, 16 ounces in a pound and 12 inches in a foot. We assume, for instance, that a gallon of gasoline is the same volume each day. What most observers don’t understand–thanks to John Maynard...

LOST AMID all the fireworks in that CNBC debate of the GOP presidential candidates was the answer Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave to a question about the Federal Reserve, advocating that the dollar be tied to gold. Other than Ron Paul, who has long been a gold-standard advocate, and his senator son, Rand, no other presidential candidate has pushed serious monetary reform since yours truly ran 16 years ago. This is stunning, given the immense damage our central bank has inflicted on the U.S. and the global economy. In fact, few economists, politicians or pundits are even aware of the...

Interesting political debates typically have what could be called primary effects. In Wednesday night's case, those would include the Bush-Rubio exchange, which did a lot of good for Rubio and a lot of damage to Bush, and the Cruz assault on the moderators, which was dazzling.But there are also answers and exchanges that only become important later on, perhaps in the next debate. You might say these are moments (potentially) have major secondary effects. There are a couple of them lurking in the transcript of Wednesday's debate. One in particular struck me.Rick Santelli asked Ted Cruz about the Federal Reserve....

GOP Presidential candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump took his campaign to Sioux City, Iowa on Tuesday night. He spoke to a packed house on policy issues and tried to rally the state to his side amid media reports that his numbers have faltered behind Ben Carson in the polls. The polls may show support in Iowa slipping for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but Tuesday night in Sioux City Trump set the “gold standard” for presidential campaign rally attendance, according to a local reporter, with an enthusiastic crowd of 2,200. After he had spoken to the audience, Trump ran an...

The New Republic, in its February 8th issue, carries an article by Danny Vinik entitled Rand Paul Has the Most Dangerous Economic Views of Any 2016 Candidate. It appears that TNR’s fact checkers decamped along with its top journalists. Vinik: Speaking in front of more than 150 Iowa activists, Paul ripped into the Federal Reserve and promoted his “Audit the Fed” bill, which he introduced earlier this week. “I think there needs to be some sunshine,” he said, according to reports of the event. …Paul’s bill …would significantly damage the Fed’s independence, which exists so that politicians cannot influence the...

For most of my career in international investing, I had always placed a great deal of faith in Switzerland's financial markets. In recent years, however, as the Swiss government has sought to hitch its wagon to the flailing euro currency and kowtow increasingly to U.S.-based financial requirements, this faith has been shaken. But this week (November 30th) a referendum in Switzerland on whether its central bank will be required to hold at least 20% of its reserves in gold, will offer ordinary Swiss citizens a rare opportunity to reclaim their country's strong economic heritage. It's a vote that few outside...

"[If] the monetary authorities are intent on depreciating the currency, then I think that in the fullness of time they will succeed all too well. …The important thing about QE [quantitative easing] is this idea, this radical precedent is now on the books — the virus as it were is in the monetary bloodstream. ...all of this is…in the books as precedent, and the monetarists and Keynesians are rather preening about the evident success of these interventions, and we can be sure I think that they will not forebear to do more still next time. There will come a time...

An extensive interview with Steve Forbes on the gold standard, economics and America's future. We touch on topics including among others: *The link between foreign policy/American strength and monetary policy *How currency devaluation helps the financial sector to the detriment of the rest of the American economy [Starting at 3:00] *The significance of a strong currency in enabling trade and thus trust, and social stability/morality *Why the historical record of the gold standard should trump the arguments of its naysayers *Whether politicians will ever be incentivized to truly support a sound dollar *Why quantitative easing was more disastrous than the...

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...

As the U. S. lurches towards a planned economy, it might be interesting to look at the experiences of countries which have already adopted this approach. Unfortunately, few professors will discuss central planning in anything but rhapsodic terms. One of the notable naysayers is Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University. In an appearance at the Cato Institute last month, he pointed out that: In Spain, the laws require 45 days severance pay for each year of service of a fired employee. As a result of this distorted incentive, businesses never want to hire or fire people, which contributed...

Free enterprise, free markets, competition, and choice: All are timeless economic principles, but their application can and should evolve with changing economic circumstances. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the top income-tax rate was 70 percent, inflation was 13 percent, health-care spending was 10 percent of GDP, and publicly held debt was 26 percent. The average American was 30 years old.Today, the top marginal tax rate is 40 percent, and inflation is 2 percent. Health-care spending and the debt have both risen by nearly 80 percent as a share of output. The average American is 37 years...

Will Deep-sea Mining Yield an Underwater Gold Rush? Some environmentalists say the lure of precious minerals threatens ocean life and local cultures. A mile beneath the ocean's waves waits a buried cache beyond any treasure hunter's wildest dreams: gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals. Scientists have known about the bounty for decades, but only recently has rising demand for such commodities sparked interest in actually surfacing it. The treasure doesn't lie in the holds of sunken ships, but in natural mineral deposits that a handful of companies are poised to begin mining sometime in the next one to five...

The most perfect monetary system humans have yet created was the world gold standard system of the late 19th century, roughly 1870-1914. We don’t have to hypothesize too much about what a new world gold standard system could look like. We can just look at what has already been done. Contrary to popular belief, people generally did not conduct commerce with gold coins. Yes, gold coins existed, but people mostly used paper banknotes and bank transfers, just as they do today. In 1910, gold coins comprised $591 million out of total currency (base money) of $3,149 million in the United...

To get rich is glorious. – Deng Xiaoping As noted in last week’s column about the rising recognition by authorities in Germany about the virtues of gold, the gold standard is receiving impressive new recognition internationally. The GOP plank calling for a commission to study “possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar” — with an unmistakable nod to gold — is the most prominent element of the 2012 GOP platform still being heard to “reverberate around the world.” Meanwhile, it continues to gain impressive momentum in the United States. CNN’s Kevin Voigt writes, in The China Post,...

On September 18th, the London office of Deutsche Bank — one of the most respected banks in the world, and a bellwether of elite opinion — published a Global Markets Research paper entitled Gold: Adjusting for Zero. It was written by two esteemed, mainstream analysts Daniel Brebner and Xiao Fu: "[G]old is not really a commodity at all. While it is included in the commodities basket it is in fact a medium of exchange and one that is officially recognised (if not publicly used as such). We see gold as an officially recognised form of money for one primary reason:...

Pundits are pooh-poohing the plank in the GOP platform that calls for a commission to examine “possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar,” declaring it a sop to Ron Paul supporters. And indeed this was a motivation of hard-core political calculators around Governor Romney. But these self-styled, world-weary cynical types didn’t put this item in of their own volition. They went along with it because it was pushed hard by Tea Party groups and several U.S. senators and representatives, as well as Ron Paul devotees. A picture from the gold vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of...

The Republican Party looks set to adopt platform planks at the upcoming GOP national convention in Tampa to support an audit of the Federal Reserve and to call for a commission to study a return to the gold standard, according to news reports. Analysts had a range of reactions to the news, varying from excitement to disdain and disbelief. Despite media claims that Republicans were seeking an end to centrally managed fiat currency and a return to gold-backed money, drafts of the platform revealed far less ambition. According to sources within the GOP cited in reports, the party is simply...

The gold standard has returned to mainstream U.S. politics for the first time in 30 years, with a “gold commission” set to become part of official Republican party policy. Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold. The move shows how five years of easy monetary policy — and the efforts of congressman Ron Paul — have made the once-fringe idea of returning to gold-as-money a legitimate...

The dollar has lost 85 percent of its purchasing power since the government scrapped the gold standard in the early 1970s, and it's up to Congress to obey the Constitution and bring the system back, says historian and investor Lewis E. Lehrman, author of the book "The True Gold Standard."

Out on the campaign trail, Fed head Ben Bernanke is an unpopular guy. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have both said they would replace Bernanke, not reappoint him. Rep. Ron Paul would swap the whole Federal Reserve monetary system for a gold-linked dollar, making the yellow metal legal tender. And it was Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, before he dropped out of the race, who said more quantitative easing by the Fed would be "almost treasonous." Republicans in Washington are equally unimpressed by Bernanke. Rep. Paul Ryan recently criticized the Fed for bankrolling our huge budget deficits and thereby accommodating...