Autumn

Autumn

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Gold Standard

From the Wall Street Journal:

An under-reported development of this campaign season is the Republican Party's decision this week to send Gov. Mitt Romney into the presidential race on a platform effectively calling for a new gold commission. The realization that America's system of fiat money is part of its economic problem is moving from the fringes of political discussion to the center.

It's about time.

Stephen

 

10 comments:

  1. It's my understanding that a party's platform rarely affects its actual operations after the election, but this is interesting. Will be even MORE interesting if Romney brings it up again, assuming he wins.

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    1. I agree, Rev. Let's hope we see results. Thanks, my friend.

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  2. When the government decided to stop backing the dollar with gold I was stationed in Europe. France under DeGaulle was shamelessly taking advantage of the balance of payments in their favor to stockpile gold. Shameless because France never repaid us billions we lent them to rebuild after WW II. The problem with a gold standard is you actually have to be willing to redeem the dollar in gold. I can remember as a child in the 40's my mother would put a silver dollar in my birthday cake. She would go to the bank with a dollar and get a silver dollar for it. I had all those silver dollars until just recently. The second problem with a gold standard is there isn't enough gold. The U.S. certainly does not have enough gold to back their money and arguably all the gold in the world would not be enough to back our money. A gold standard made sense in a world with far, far less people then we have today and when our economy was king. We will never see a gold/silver backed currency again.

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  3. The Chinese just bought many TONS of gold. Our country should do the same. Geologist believe that there are untold amounts of gold that has never been recovered. Modern technologies allow the extraction of microscopic particlse of gold.
    The Republican platform has several interesting statements such as a nationwide concealed carry reciprocity.

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    1. Thanks, Dean. Had to rescue this comment from my spam filter. The Chinese have been snapping up gold for a while now. Guess they know something we don't.

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  4. Something will have to be done to restart the economy once it collapses. The thing is, back when the country ran on gold, it still had horrible boom and bust cycles. Sound money is only one piece of the puzzle.

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  5. Very true, my friend. But, at least gold and silver have, worth....FDR's, not so much. Thanks, Bubba.

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  6. This is likely a way to drawn the Ron Paul voters that are less than thrilled with the party. I don't see it happening, unless they are planning for a dollar crash (like Sixbears mentioned).

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    1. Good point, Jason. Many share your view of the gold standard, and the dollar crash. Checked out your blog, nice. God bless, and hey, don't be a stranger. Thanks.

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