Posted on 06/14/2021 4:09:14 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
Nixon was worried about trade deficits and a deteriorating balance of payments. He rejected the advice of Volcker, then treasury undersecretary, and the Fed chairman at the time, Arthur Burns. Instead, Nixon closed the gold window, meaning foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold. The value of the greenback fell like a stone.
So as the value of our currency declined, prices denominated in dollars sky-rocketed. We printed bad money and too much of it, and that’s the definition of inflation. Excess money in relation to demand will do it every time. Lack of value will do it every time. In 1973, Nixon abolished all remaining remnants of the gold dollar exchange system.
Inflation soared, first hitting double-digits while Nixon was president. All commodity prices, including oil, sky-rocketed along with just about everything else. On top of that, income tax rates were not indexed to inflation in those days. So higher and higher inflation drove middle-class Americans into higher and higher tax rate brackets. That had a huge braking effect on the economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
THIS time, the Democrats are doing it all by themselves, just to prove they can, I guess.
The National Debt when Reagan took office in Jan 2021 was $990 billion. We are now approaching a $30 trillion National Debt and where was all of this money spent?
Carter and Nixon both pursued stupid borderline socialist economic policies. Let’s not forget Carter’s attempt at wholesale price fixing which led to the worst gas lines we’ve ever seen. Then there was the “windfall profits tax”. And there was Carter on the radio blaming Americans for the energy crisis, which just told us that Carter didn’t really know what to do.
We’ve had a Deep State a lot longer than we knew.
-PJ
Yeah blame it on the Republican, 50 years after the fact. The answer is no. Jimmy was an idiot, plain & simple. Now go back to your naval gazing entertainment.
Nixon considered the closing of the gold window his most important achievement while in office.
Other countries were scoffing up US dollars and trading them to the US Treasury for gold bars, France being the biggest offender.
Prior to that US citizens could not own more than one ounce of gold, thanks to FDR. If caught with some, it was confiscated without compensation, and fines and penalties were handed out.
I know it was controversial at the time but personally, I think his biggest mistake was opening up China. I liked it better when it was just a huge, poor and technically backward country.
Nixon believes the Keynsian nonsense. And instituted things like wage and price controls.
It needs to be remembered that Ronald Reagan received his economics degree BEFORE the New Deal economic theories took hold. His was a classic Adam Smith Wealth of Nations education.
Contrast that with George H.W. Bush, who also had an economics degree, but received after WWII. That’s why Bush called Reaganomics “voodoo” economics, because he was never taught about the “invisible hand,” etc. And why he could be talked into tax increases. And Bush was also a Nixon protege.
Trump at the Wharton School probably received a more classical economics education, and decades in business taught him how economies really work.
These two schools of thought, one based on reality and one based in theory have been battling it out since the New Deal.
Some conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Roger Stone are Nixon fans.
We’ve had a Deep State a lot longer than we knew.
———— long before we had a name for these real monsters of the world.
decline of the dollar started with LBJ’s policies. The Great Society, Vietnam.
———— theses two policies, exactly. Simplistic yes, one was buying poverty people votes and punishing achievers of any level, and the second was diversion, “ look at those bad people , over there!”
No different than many Democrats blaming Nixon for Vietnam War. Gulf of Tonkin was McNamara’s baby, and Long Big Johnson is its father.
The U.S. dollar inflation of the 1970s was the direct result of perhaps the most idiotic fiscal policy adopted by the U.S. government up to that time -- involving the massive growth of entitlements through the "Great Society" programs while pursuing a major military campaign in Vietnam at the same time.
It's no coincidence that the 2007-2008 meltdown occurred after the George W. Bush administration did the same thing.
Nixon took us off the gold standard which hurt our economy, but corrected it by creating the Petro Dollar, having Kissenger negotiate our support for the Arabs.
Carter, by not supporting the Sha of Iran, created the problems as the Arabs saw that as breaking Nixon’s deal.
When Sadam Hussein started selling oil for Euro’s and Yen, CIA Bush had to crush him to keep the Petro Dollar.
Nixon simply adopted like “ a read my lips “ Bush idiot a policy a Carterite jubilantly cheered for, namely the abandoning of the gold standard.
Back then before communism, you had the haves with gold and the have nots without it. Nowadays you have the haves with assets and the have less with debt.
Thank you Nixon for ushering big government, since big government never loses, even when becoming a spending drone without rudder, now disinterested in creating wealth thanks to free money and interests.
Nixon was only part of the story. Johnson tried a “Great Society” while fighting a war. You can have war or massive welfare, but not both at the same time.
I remember a friend of mine’s dad was livid when the debt reached one trillion dollars. I believe it was 8n April of his first term.
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