Never Mind Watergate

WSJ ^

[ChicagoConservative27]

In the midst of the current crisis—with the dollar having collapsed to barely more than a 1,400th of the value of an ounce of gold, the United Nations calling for a new world currency and Ben Bernanke becoming a political punching bag for the "quantitative easing" that critics fear will ignite inflation—we now have a book containing the secret diaries of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board during Richard Nixon's presidency, a time of turmoil in currencies and markets and of policies that haunt our economy to this day.

Arthur Burns, the pipe-puffing ex-Columbia professor who served as Fed chairman under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, turns out to have kept a diary between 1969, shortly before he became the 10th chairman of the Fed, and 1974, when President Nixon resigned. The diary was given by Burns's widow, Helen, to the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and released for publication in 2008. The scoop— "Inside the Nixon Administration: The Secret Diary of Arthur Burns"—is edited by Robert H. Ferrell, a scholar of American history.

[Weirdad]

Great post, thanks! Important book that I did not know about.

I have to admit, though, that even as a kid I noticed how strange and suspicious the wage and price freeze and the gold changes were, and I was amazed that no one seemed to complain effectively. People were so “compliant”back then...