The gold standard argument never really ended because Nixon solved one crisis by creating another kind of permission structure. Gold restrained politicians because it told them no. Fiat money tells them maybe. Maybe print. Maybe borrow. Maybe inflate. Maybe paper over war, welfare, debt, bailouts, and managed decline with another round of monetary manipulation. Nixon may have had no clean choice in 1971. Vietnam, Great Society spending, foreign claims, and contradictions at Bretton Woods had boxed him in. But once the anchor was cut, Washington learned the most dangerous lesson in politics: discipline can be postponed. The bill still comes.
It gave the government a blank check 39 trillion worth of checks and still writing. It brings forward another question. What’s the reason for wars and who benefits from them?
No doubt. It would be interesting to know who else was at Camp David. My guess would be people that had the most to gain by going off the gold standard.
I'll have to keep looking to find that story. I did see where Tina Peters was released. Can't believe I never heard about that. The vast majority of news I get is mostly off the radar. Zero mainstream stuff and most of what passes as news is garbage. Seems like Tina would have been mentioned.
No one ever addresses the real problem with paper money—it is patently unconstitutional. James Madison, aka the Father of the Constitution being its chief architect, called paper money a “wicked project” and a pestilence. (Madison, The Federalist Papers, Ltrs.10,¶22 and 44,¶4) Madison also wrote in his notes taken during the Constitutional Convention that the U.S. Constitution would “cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender for public or private debts.” Even SCOTUS agreed in 1844 that “By the Constitution of the United States, gold and silver coins made current by law can only be tendered in payment of debts.”
Paper money was introduced for one purpose only and that was to fund war and, as such, it has become the basis for the destruction of our Constitutional Republic. SCOTUS abandoned our Constitution and began its habit of amending the Constitution by court opinion in 1871 with the Knox v Lee case where they ruled that Congress could authorize the printing of paper money contrary to what everyone knew and understood at the time. Since that time, it has been used to fund and sustain war.
I'm no economist but what if they had just revalued gold at $140/oz? That would have curbed the foreign demand for the limited supply but kept us on the gold standard.
I'm also surprised it didn't take an act of congress.
Interesting idea. It would have at least been honest for the US treasury to just raise the price of gold to match the amount of currency in circulation. Keep raising the price of gold until foreign countries did not want to convert dollars back to gold. This would have established the real market price of gold vs. dollars and kept the gold in the US.
It would have also completely exposed the banker's plans to profit off of American political largess. Might not have changed anything for the average American but it would have at least been a constant reminder of how much the political class was inflating away the value of the dollar.
The gold standard argument never really ended because Nixon solved one crisis by creating another kind of permission structure. Gold restrained politicians because it told them no. Fiat money tells them maybe. Maybe print. Maybe borrow. Maybe inflate. Maybe paper over war, welfare, debt, bailouts, and managed decline with another round of monetary manipulation. Nixon may have had no clean choice in 1971. Vietnam, Great Society spending, foreign claims, and contradictions at Bretton Woods had boxed him in. But once the anchor was cut, Washington learned the most dangerous lesson in politics: discipline can be postponed. The bill still comes.
It gave the government a blank check 39 trillion worth of checks and still writing. It brings forward another question. What’s the reason for wars and who benefits from them?
As I read real history, Nixon did NOT make this decision on his own,. Got a little help from (non) friends...
No doubt. It would be interesting to know who else was at Camp David. My guess would be people that had the most to gain by going off the gold standard.
Don't quote me on this, but it was LBJ types...I think. Plan to go digging for this info again.
I would bet money there was a significant presence of Trilateral Commision.
Here is what I wrote on it 2/25
https://pat4evr.substack.com/p/the-golden-ponzi-scheme
I'll have to keep looking to find that story. I did see where Tina Peters was released. Can't believe I never heard about that. The vast majority of news I get is mostly off the radar. Zero mainstream stuff and most of what passes as news is garbage. Seems like Tina would have been mentioned.
No one ever addresses the real problem with paper money—it is patently unconstitutional. James Madison, aka the Father of the Constitution being its chief architect, called paper money a “wicked project” and a pestilence. (Madison, The Federalist Papers, Ltrs.10,¶22 and 44,¶4) Madison also wrote in his notes taken during the Constitutional Convention that the U.S. Constitution would “cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender for public or private debts.” Even SCOTUS agreed in 1844 that “By the Constitution of the United States, gold and silver coins made current by law can only be tendered in payment of debts.”
Paper money was introduced for one purpose only and that was to fund war and, as such, it has become the basis for the destruction of our Constitutional Republic. SCOTUS abandoned our Constitution and began its habit of amending the Constitution by court opinion in 1871 with the Knox v Lee case where they ruled that Congress could authorize the printing of paper money contrary to what everyone knew and understood at the time. Since that time, it has been used to fund and sustain war.
A DARK DAY for America in many, many ways!!!
Nixon’s conundrum was a lot like the old prison joke: "Do you wanna be da husband o da wife?"
I'm no economist but what if they had just revalued gold at $140/oz? That would have curbed the foreign demand for the limited supply but kept us on the gold standard.
I'm also surprised it didn't take an act of congress.
Interesting idea. It would have at least been honest for the US treasury to just raise the price of gold to match the amount of currency in circulation. Keep raising the price of gold until foreign countries did not want to convert dollars back to gold. This would have established the real market price of gold vs. dollars and kept the gold in the US.
It would have also completely exposed the banker's plans to profit off of American political largess. Might not have changed anything for the average American but it would have at least been a constant reminder of how much the political class was inflating away the value of the dollar.
I'm glad you explained. I still don't understand as much as I should since I'm not in the money bus. But, I know more than I did.