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Since the federal reserve was created we have had the two worst economic downturns in our history. Look at our yearly GDP since we got off the gold standard and our debt has soared. Paul is 100% right.
So you want to go back to the 19th century? Gold standard is idiotic and will lead to more inequality and economic stagnation. Paul is wrong and a loon. I still respect him for sticking to his principles however.
So you want to go back to the 19th century? Gold standard is idiotic and will lead to more inequality and economic stagnation. Paul is wrong and a loon. I still respect him for sticking to his principles however.
I view gold as the primary global currency. It is the only currency, along with silver, that does not require a counterparty signature. Gold, however, has always been far more valuable per ounce than silver. No one refuses gold as payment to discharge an obligation. Credit instruments and fiat currency depend on the credit worthiness of a counterparty. Gold, along with silver, is one of the only currencies that has an intrinsic value. It has always been that way. No one questions its value, and it has always been a valuable commodity, first coined in Asia Minor in 600 BC.
The gold standard was operating at its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of extraordinary global prosperity, characterised by firming productivity growth and very little inflation.
But today, there is a widespread view that the 19th century gold standard didn’t work. I think that’s like wearing the wrong size shoes and saying the shoes are uncomfortable! It wasn’t the gold standard that failed; it was politics. World War I disabled the fixed exchange rate parities and no country wanted to be exposed to the humiliation of having a lesser exchange rate against the US dollar than itenjoyed in 1913.
Britain, for example, chose to return to the gold standard in 1925 at the same exchange rate it had in 1913 relative to the US dollar (US$4.86 per pound sterling). That was a monumental error by Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. It induced a severe deflation for Britain in the late 1920s, and the Bank of England had to default in 1931. It wasn’t the gold standard that wasn’t functioning; it was these pre-war parities that didn’t work. All wanted to return to pre-war exchange rate parities, which, given the different degree of war and economic destruction from country to country, rendered this desire, in general, wholly unrealistic.
Today, going back on to the gold standard would be perceived as an act of desperation. But if the gold standard were in place today we would not have reached the situation in which we now find ourselves.
Granted, no one should ever take financial advice from Alan Greenspan but what he is doing here is saying "I was wrong but it wasn't my fault".
So you want to go back to the 19th century? Gold standard is idiotic and will lead to more inequality and economic stagnation. Paul is wrong and a loon. I still respect him for sticking to his principles however.
So you want to go back to the 19th century? Gold standard is idiotic and will lead to more inequality and economic stagnation. Paul is wrong and a loon. I still respect him for sticking to his principles however.
We had much more growth with the gold standard than we have had since. And how would it lead to inequality? Hard money is a better foundation than fiat money.
Ron Paul is far from a loon. He is actually honest and you are he sticks to his principals and his ideals would have kept us out of much of the mess we are in now.
I think the information is correct but the conclusion is spurious at best.
Yes the information is correct and your only argument is that there were other factors also. Factors that do not come in play without ending the gold standard in many cases.
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