Posted on 09/27/2011 6:25:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
NEW YORK — The next big step in the gold standard debate is going to be taken next month at Washington, when one of the original members of the Reagan-era United States Gold Commission offers a five-step plan to return America to sound money.
The architect of the plan, Lewis Lehrman, a businessman and scholar, will present his program in an address October 5 at a conference in Washington on the how to return to a stable dollar. He will outline a five-step program to return America to a gold-backed currency within five years.
What is significant about the event is its aim of shifting the discussion to practical steps that could be taken to rescue the American monetary system. It comes as the value of the United States dollar has collapsed to record lows, sinking at one point this month to less than an 1,800th of an ounce of gold. The value of the dollar has recovered marginally in recent days, but still lurks below a 1,600th of an ounce of gold, a level that would have been nearly unimaginable — at least in policy terms — as recently as the start of President George W. Bush’s first term, when the dollar had a value of a 265th of an ounce of gold.
“The stand-pat defenders of today’s paper-dollar system turn back every argument in favor of the gold standard by claiming that there’s no practical way to re-establish it,” says the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, James Grant. “What Lehrman has done is to devise a practical and persuasive plan to do just that.” He predicts “the ball is now — or soon will be — in the paper-money court as it has not been for a long time.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
You’re joking, right?
You can trade anything except your kid or your wife.
Well, maybe your wife is OK.
You have to read the iRS rules about how to treat such sales but they are not illegal.
If history repeats itself, somehow I don’t think folks are going to be the same “patrotic” timid sheeple willing to turn over their bullion to Geithner and the IMF, as they did to FDR in 1933.
My point is that if there were a gold standard, we wouldn’t see such fluctuations and volatility.
Besides, do you get alarmed when Wal-Mart raises the price of a can of beans from 79 cents to 99 cents?
The point of looking at historical prices is to understand what is, and that when we had a gold standard we did in fact "see such fluctuations and volatility."
When did we see a 25% weekly fluctuation in the purchasing power of a gold-backed dollar?
Commodity prices were vastly more stable when markets were physical places where brokers, acting on snail mail instructions or a telegraph, made trades.
That’s far from the case now.
Somehow I’d have thought you wouldn’t need my input when there so many publically available sources of historical price records easy to click/open. They all show a wild unworkable price volatility since the nation’s founding that leveled out in the mid-20th as gold was phased out.
Maybe if you’re working around some kind of disability or this is all so new that I might be able to explain or help with something?
Goodness you’re cranky!
I would have hoped we could have a productive discussion, but will now bow out.
So we can imagine. Reality is that it was madness...
Figure 2: "A flurry in wheat at the Chicago Board of Trade," 1880. Reprinted from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, October 1880, 725
Read more at Contemplating Delivery: Futures Trading and the Problem of Commodity Exchange in the United States, 1875–1905
You think there is any left? Gold is known to be volatile substance.
Raise the price of gold 30-fold and problem solved.
Bank of America has derivatives worth 50 trillion. All major banks have toxic assets several times that much. As one banker said "Greece is the mouse in the room. The banks are elephant in the room."
30-fold is perhaps conservative. Slashing two zeroes and setting a gold standard might do the trick.
BOA is a private entity. are you suggesting that we confiscate private assets to service public debt?
and how do you propose to raise the price of gold? by fiat?
lol --it sure is easy to misread others on these text chats, that's why I admitted that I didn't know what was going on with you so I asked you to tell me what you wanted! Getting back to gold/money, you asked me for info on money (when did we see a 25% weekly fluctuation in the purchasing power of a gold-backed dollar?) and I'm still willing to get the info but the question makes no sense and doesn't connect to our chat.
In fact it sounds like you're trying to say the US never had a 25% weekly fluctuation in the purchasing power of a gold-backed dollar but I'd be guessing.
No. BOA's "assets" are worth MINUS $50T. There is nothing to confiscate. 
But if it pops...it will be heard all the way to China.
As of price of gold, think this way. How many ounces U.S. Government holds? How much money U.S. Government owes to foreign creditors? If creditors accept gold, and all debt is to be paid with the available gold, how much would one ounce have to cost in order to settle all debt? ($22,000/ounce)
Worldwide, there is approx. 6 billion ounces of gold above Earth. That's it. Less than $12T at current prices. And there are trillions of dollars worthless "assets" worldwide. Much of it iz Ponzi scheme capital. Much of it will go in a big poof, but hard to predict how much of solid money will remain on books.
When other countries were in such dire situation, they slashed zeros from their bank notes. This could happen to U.S. (e.g. 1 New Washington for 1 old Franklin)
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