Gold Std vs Fiat Cuurency
Entry posted by Gaius Octavius
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Gaius Octavius:
QUOTE(Moonlapse @ Sep 22 2007, 01:26 PM)
Fiat money...
I doubt if a modern economy could exist without fiat money. The transaction amounts are much too great.
When the Spanish introduced New World gold to Europe, there was a great inflation!
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Moonlapse:
QUOTE(Gaius Octavius @ Sep 23 2007, 12:24 PM)
QUOTE(Moonlapse @ Sep 22 2007, 01:26 PM)
Fiat money...
I doubt if a modern economy could exist without fiat money.
You are absolutely right, and that is the THE problem. Actually, I should say modern war-driven economies.
QUOTE
The transaction amounts are much too great.
If a nation has a fixed currency standard and a certain amount of wealth, then all other amounts are relative to that... until you want to force a debt based monetary system in order to sped more money than is available.
QUOTE
When the Spanish introduced New World gold to Europe, there was a great inflation!
Of course. The supply of the actual commodity which has intrinsic value had increased. Paper money has no intrinsic value, whoever controls the supply has the ability to do what the Spanish did, but all that is involved is the allocation of credit, WITH INTEREST. The only limit they have is the point at which they have sucked out all the value that the original gold currency contained.
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G.O.:
Moonlapse, are you advocating a commodity based monetary system?
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Moon.:
Absolutely.
"Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit, and, with a flick of the pen, they will create enough money to buy it all back again. Take this power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit."
Josiah Stamp
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Thomas Jefferson
"A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world--no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
Woodrow Wilson
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."
Alan Greenspan
I would never advocate a fiat monetary system, because it will always be used for its capability to extract wealth and control. Why do you think the system was implemented right before the first World War? Why do you think the dollar is dropping against other currencies? What do you think is happening in the Middle East? We are trying to prop up the dollar with the commodity of oil, because the dollar is becoming worthless. If the dollar becomes worthless, then what happens?
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M. Porcious Cato:
In his new book, Greenspan repeats his views about the overwhelming benefits of the gold standard for a stable money supply. I'll see if I can find the original quote because it's quite revealing.
I should add that a gold standard doesn't mean that people would have to actually carry out transactions in gold. All that matters is that bank notes are redeemable in gold.
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Moon.:
I would love to see a return to the gold standard, with the control of money given back to Congress and the selection of Senators given back to the states, as prescribed in the Constitution.
Basically, repeal all the screw-ups made in 1913.
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MPC:
If bank notes are redeemable in gold, there is no need for a national currency.
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MPC:
From Greenspan's new book:
pp. 480-481: "I have always harbored a nostalgia for the gold standard's inherent price stability--a stable currency was its primary goal. But I've long since acquiesced in the fact that the gold standard does not readily accommodate the widely accepted current view of the appropriate functions of government--in particular the need for government to provide a social safety net. The propensity of Congress to create benefits for constituents without specifying the means by which they are to be funded has led to deficit spending in every fiscal year since 1970, with the exception of the surpluses of 1998 to 2001 generated by the stock market boom. The shifting of real resources required to perform such functions has imparted a bias toward inflation. In the political arena, the pressure to make low-interest-rate credit generally available and to use fiscal measures to boost employment and avoid the unpleasantness of downward adjustments in nominal wages and prices has become nearly impossible to resist. For the most part, the American people have tolerated the inflation bias as an acceptable cost of the modern welfare state. There is no support for the gold standard today, and I see no likelihood of its return. [...]
We know that the average inflation rate under the gold and earlier commodity standards was essentially zero. At the height of the gold standard between 1870 and 1913, just prior to World War I, the cost of living in the United States, as calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rose by a scant 0.2 percent per annum on average. From 1939 to 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of the post-cold war wage-price disinflation, the CPI rose nine-fold, or 4.5 percent per year. The reflects the fact that there is no inherent anchor in a fiat money regime. What constitutes its "normal" inflation rate is a function solely of a country's culture and history. In the United States, modest amounts of inflation are politically tolerated, but inflation rates close to double digits create a political storm. Indeed, Richard Nixon felt the political need to impose wage and price controls in 1971 even though the inflation rate was below 5 percent. Thus, while political considerations mean that the gold standard can be ruled out as a way to suppress a forthcoming rise in inflationary pressures, ironically, politics driven by an irate populace just might accomplish the same purpose."
What follows is a very scary scenario regarding the combination of the collapse of social security and currently high inflation, requiring a rise in the interest rate in the double digits and a "return of populist, anti-Fed rhetoric, which was lain dormant since 1991."
Greenspan's book is definitely worth a read.
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GO:
How would a gold standard work? Assume that a bank has 100 ounces of gold (capital and depositor's gold). How would it go about making loans (and protect itself against 'runs')? Would it be a gyro bank?
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MPC:
QUOTE(Gaius Octavius @ Oct 1 2007, 06:44 AM)
How would a gold standard work? Assume that a bank has 100 ounces of gold (capital and depositor's gold). How would it go about making loans (and protect itself against 'runs')? Would it be a gyro bank?
Typically, banks made loans and conducted business via bank notes that were redeemable in gold, which were kept in deposit. This is really no different from the fiat currency that we all expect banks to disburse on demand. Then, as now, there was a short-term risk of runs on the banks, which banks dealt with then, as now, by borrowing from other banks. Of course, the cost of a panic isn't trivial, but the benefits of stable currency are well worth it.
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GO:
Is there any limit to this expansion? Do you think that one could conduct Wall Street's business today and how?
Once there were Gold Certificates issued by the Treasury or Fed (no longer remember) prior to the great Depression. They were in circulation. Didn't stop the Great Deflation.
The Federal Reserve used (?) to balance check clearance balances with special Gold Certificates. Oddly enough, those districts losing Certificates would find themselves in economic trouble.
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MPC:
QUOTE(Gaius Octavius @ Oct 1 2007, 11:58 AM)
Is there any limit to this expansion? Do you think that one could conduct Wall Street's business today and how?
Absolutely there is a limit to the expansion of gold and thus to the expansion of prices. If we were to go back to the gold standard (at $733 = 1 gold dollar), there would certainly have to be a change in denomination, but there's no reason that one couldn't trade any number (or denominations) of proxies for gold reserves.
QUOTE
Once there were Gold Certificates issued by the Treasury or Fed (no longer remember) prior to the great Depression. They were in circulation. Didn't stop the Great Deflation.
The gold standard doesn't protect against every deflationary pressure known to man. Obviously, if the sum total of goods triples overnight, the gold value of each of those goods will decline.
QUOTE
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Moon:
Gaius, here's some related reading on the Depression from a gold standard perspective, if you are curious:
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd/contents.asp
There's a link to a full PDF text beneath the title.
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