Fall fashions- pg 4
Posted on 08/27/2016 10:30:13 AM PDT by NRx
A (mostly) daily posting for those interested in history and the day to day news, politics and culture of a bygone world; the full edition of the New York Tribune from today's date in 1896 (digitized).
(Excerpt) Read more at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov ...
Fall fashions- pg 4
Historical Note: The gold standard was opposed by Populists, led by Democrat William Jennings Bryan. It was regarded as a tool of control by elites.
If we went back to the gold standard, our gold would be Chinese within a year.
We run massive trade deficits.
If we didn’t have our massive debt, the Federal Reserve could manage a fiat currency properly.
However, since we have too much debt, the Federal Reserve operates in cheap money mode too long and runs up the real estate markets so high that they must collapse since so few people who need a house just to live in can afford to buy a house.
Indeed, Bryan supported the so called Free Silver movement that proposed the unrestricted coinage of silver with a defined value of 16:1 oz. (silver:gold). This was of course about twice the fair market value which was 32:1. The object of the silverites was to debase the currency and spark inflation which would have effectively reduced by at least half existing debt, both personal and public, by forcing creditors to accept 50 cents on the dollar in real money. It would have driven gold out of circulation since no one in their right mind would trade one ounce of gold for 16 of silver. Foreign creditors saw this as a threatened repudiation of US sovereign debt since at the time US Government bonds were explicitly backed by gold and creditors had loaned gold when buying American bonds.
The battle in 1896 was between McKinley’s Gold standard and a bimetallic standard (Gold and Silver).
The elites won. The constitutionally equivalent use of both Gold and Silver as money ended, as gold was formally established as the only US standard for redeeming paper money.
In case this sounds like an archaic issue: the last US President to propose that silver should be usable for redeeming paper money was shot dead in Dallas.
And so we fast forward to today. Worldwide: money is now completely divorced from reality, from either real gold or real silver.
The federal reserve note (aka ‘the dollar’) is backed by nothing except full faith and credit. Nations around the world are rejecting it as their reserve currency, and are forming multiple bilateral agreements to avoid using it.
All that ‘money’ will come home. The ESF won’t be able to soak it up: they can’t buy dollars with printed dollars. This means that some time this year or next year - who knows? - we can expect a sharp devaluation of the dollar. I’m thinking of the order of 50%.
Good detail.
The McKinley campaign used the strategy of claiming Bryan’s ‘free coinage of silver’ meant Bryan was in favor of ‘free trade’.
Bryan and the Democrats lost the election because ordinary working people feared that their employer-fixed wages would lose lots of buying power.
“free trade”
To replace the tariff revenue, the income tax was brought in, again.
An income tax was used during the Civil War.
Beware of “free” things.
The US has never had a bi-metalic currency. Prior to the Rebellion, the country was on a silver standard. Gold was used in trade mostly by the very wealthy and they set the value, not the government in terms of silver/gold. During the war the government adopted a fiat currency which sparked severe inflation (and rampant counterfeiting). This ended in 1873 when the country followed most of the rest of the world and adopted the Gold Standard.
The Free Silver movement claimed they were in favor of bi-metalism but it was a patent lie. They wanted a de-facto silver standard and a 50% devaluation of the currency by forcing creditors to accept silver in payment of gold debt at 16:1 oz. ratio. Essentially they were demanding that creditors accept 50 cents and call it a dollar. They also wanted to abolish gold clauses in contracts and bonds in order to guarantee the success of their debt repudiation scheme.
Bi-metalism is not really feasible because governments can’t regulate the long term value of one metal vs another. Only the free market can do that.
Today that free silver position seems almost quaint and outrageously conservative compared to the solid raping Federal Reserve gives us today.
Paying Attention to this thread - bump
Amen to that.
The Constitution declares Gold and Silver - and only Gold and Silver - to be money.
It does not give the government the power to declare the value of Gold and Silver. Only the Free Market should be allowed to do that.
But Government has long since abrogated to itself the right to control the buying power of money. Artificial control of the value of money leads to - has always led to - depression and disaster.
We wise moderns have gone even further: we have also declared that 1’s and 0’s in a computer are money.
This insanity is going to end very soon, and very badly.
I’m sure the Pope would say that those who oppose hyperinflation are “worshipers of money.” Or something equally meaningless.
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