Posted on 12/13/2009 10:00:52 AM PST by FromLori
I’d rather see a competition for ideas.
Our nation is manipulated by a media with only one political viewpoint.
At any rate, I've heard all this stuff before.
The book was published in 1996, it does not directly address today. At the time it appeared that Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan had cured inflation. What I found interesting about the book was how inflating or debasing currency is as old as the issuance of currency but does not always lead to inflation. There are times when external deflationary pressures allow a government to get away with inflating the money supply while avoiding inflation. I would make the argument that Greenspan returned to the same policies of inflating the money supply but was able to avoid the appearance of inflation due to the deflationary effect of Chinese imports. The result was repeated asset bubbles.
Some say the Greenbacks were what got Lincoln shot.
Take a look at the United States Notes released in 1963 before Kennedy was shot.
http://cgi.ebay.com/1963-XF-Condition-5-United-States-Note-Red-Seal_W0QQitemZ300375266871QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item45efc2d637
One of LBJs first acts was to take the United States Notes out of circulation.
http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htm
That link is for those tolerant of conspiracy theories.
I'm aware of that as well. I just don't see the difference between pieces of paper printed by the mint and pieces of paper printed by a bank, other than the fact that theoretcally (and please notice that I said theoretically) the bank has "real money" on hand to cover the paper while the mint doesn't.
Honestly, I don’t know either. Back in the day, banks and the Fed were said to be “responsible”. It seems to me that the US Government can simply print money to pay its bills. Debt, what debt? Here’s money, fresh off the presses. No more debt.
That would be inflationary.
I don’t get why the Fed needs to be a part of this at all.
Back in the day, yes, bankers had gold and I guess governments didn’t. Money was “real” - backed by gold, or gold itself.
Now it seems that the US Dollar is backed by our willingness and ability to use the military to make sure that oil producing nations take the US Dollar in exchange for oil.
Bankers have nothing to do with our military. Bankers have gold, the US Government has the military.
The problem is that I'm a history buff, and I've always looked to Washington, Hamilton, and the other Federalists as the "good guys" in the first party system while the Jeffersonians were dangerous radicals. And Hamilton and Washington created a bank that, as I understand it, helped our young country stand on its feet. Perhaps a reconstituted central bank exactly as Hamilton conceived it would be better?
PS: Ironically, none other than Pat Buchanan, aside from his anti-bank bias, seems much more Hamiltonian than many conservatives are nowadays. If it weren't for his problem with Jews and Israel I'd have no problem with him.
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