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IF CHILDREN ARE NEVER TAUGHT TO UNDERSTAND MONEY, HOW CAN ADULTS?
All the above are indisputable facts. But no government or central bank will ever admit to it since the total debasement of a country’s currency shows the failure of their economic policies.
Economic history is not taught in schools. No child is given a proper lesson about money, savings or compound interest. They learn empirically about debt, credit cards and spending money that you haven’t earned. How will they ever learn, how will they ever learn about sound money and how to manage their own affairs? Well they sadly won’t.
Since school children are not taught about sound money and economic history, how can we ever expect adults to grasp this subject.
In the West, the majority of people don’t understand that the Dollar, Euro, or Pound in their pocket is falling in value daily, due to incessant credit creation and money printing. People think that house prices or stock prices are going up. And they believe that food and services are regularly becoming more expensive. Very few people understand that it is not the price of goods and services that are going up but that it is the value of the money in their pocket that is constantly declining.
The principal reason why gold is the only money that has survived throughout history is that it cannot be printed. It also has many other important attributes, such as scarcity, indestructibility, divisibility etc.
MONEY CHANGERS & BANKERS
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...19/05/book.jpgIn the past, if someone performed a service or produced a product, he would be paid in gold and that gold would always maintain its value. Over time, the money changers and the bankers issued tradable notes that replaced the gold which was kept in their vault. They soon realised that they could earn a lot more money if they printed many more notes than they had gold. This is how the debasement of paper money started.
Imagine that someone had worked a whole day and received a gold coin as payment for his services. He then takes it to the bank to deposit it and receives a tradable paper note instead of his gold. But his banker is shrewd and issues another note as a loan to someone else. If this was the only transaction in the economy, by issuing the second note, the banker has now halved the value of the note. The banker is greedy and issues even more notes, so the value continues to go down. But the gold maintains its value whilst the paper money has been devalued. When the gold later was replaced by fiat money, that would be continually be debased as the banker as well as the government issued more and more paper money without any corresponding production of a goods or service.
FAKE MONEY LEADS & FAKE VALUES WILL IMPLODE
In the last 100 years, since the creation of the Fed, more money has been printed than ever in history and we are now in the exponential phase with global debt having trebled since 1999 from $80 trillion to $250 trillion.
The current global financial bubble cannot and will not end well. All the fake money and asset values must implode together with the debt. It is for this reason that we must hold physical gold as protection against the coming calamities. And whether gold goes up tomorrow or in six months’ time is totally irrelevant, in relation to the risk we are trying to protect with it.
GOLD TRADING IS 850X GOLD PRODUCTION
The reason why gold often fluctuates wildly has nothing to do with physical gold in a free market. The gold market is totally manipulated by central banks through the BIS in Basel (Bank for International Settlement) and its lackeys, the bullion banks.
The daily mine production of gold is $329 million. But the gross daily trading volume in the gold market is $280 billion according to the World Gold Council. So the daily gold trading is 850x the daily production. Most of that trading is done by the bullion banks and not the Comex or other futures exchanges. You don’t need to be an expert in trading to figure out that a market that every day turns over 850x the daily production of the underlying commodity is massively manipulated. Also, trading of that magnitude has nothing to do with physical gold but clearly has a much darker purpose. Surprisingly as the chart below shows, daily gold trading is 2x the trading in S&P stocks.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...ld_trading.jpg
Most Western central banks are unlikely to have anywhere near their officially declared gold reserves. These have either been sold covertly or leased via the bullion banks. Most of the sold or leased gold has gone to the East. Thus, most central banks just hold an IOU from a bullion bank that they are owed a certain amount of physical gold. What is absolutely clear is that this gold will never come back. Consequently the bullion banks are short 1,000s or more likely 10-15,000 tonnes of physical gold that they will never see again. It is likely that the frantic trading of the LBMA banks is to cover up the massive shortage of physical gold both in the bullion banks as well as in the central banks.
GOLD MAGINOT LINE IS AS PENETRABLE AS THE ORIGINAL ONE IN WWII
There are a number of critical factors that will soon lead to the crossing of the Gold Maginot Line at $1,350
Among them are:
The above list is certainly not exhaustive. It could of course be argued that many of the factors above have been present for a long time and gold has been going sideways for 6 years.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...05/gold_us.jpg
Due to factors such as manipulation, gold doesn’t move in a straight line. Between 1972 and 1980 gold moved up 24x from $35 to $850. Gold then corrected 29 years to a low of $250 in 1999 when central banks like the UK and Switzerland sold a major part of their gold.
We then saw a major move to $1,920 in 2011. Another correction followed and for six years gold has oscillated below the $1,350 Maginot Line. But gold should not just be measured in one currency. It has performed very differently against other currencies. In dozens of currencies gold is above the 2011 high. Due to the dollar’s temporary strength, gold seems weaker than it is if measured against a basket of currencies.
GOLD SPECULATORS ARE IMPATIENT BUT WEALTH PRESERVATIONISTS CONFIDENT
So when will the uptrend in gold start again? Many investors who bought gold near the 2011-12 highs are clearly impatient.
The fundamental factors above are not going to help us with the short term timing of the gold price. Many of us did not expect gold to pause for 8 years. But having been seriously invested in gold for over 17 years since early 2002, we have patience.
So the only short term method to predict gold’s next move is looking at gold’s technical picture. This tells us that gold is now in the finishing stages of a corrective move. Once the correction is over and gold breaks the Maginot Line at $1,350, we will see a quick move to $1,600. I would not be surprised to see gold making new highs in 2019 against the dollar, above $1,920. The next move up could start as soon as in the next 2-3 weeks. Possibly, but less likely is that the move starts August – September.
But gold should not be bought for speculative investment purposes. Gold should be held as wealth preservation or insurance against a rotten financial system that is unlikely to survive in its present form.
Like any insurance, holders of gold should not hope for gold to surge. Because when it does, the world will be a much more unpleasant place to live. It is much better to enjoy the present times knowing that if and when the problems in the world start in earnest, you are protected.
SILVER SUPPLIES ARE GETTING TIGHT
The supply situation in gold is still acceptable. But in silver it is becoming more difficult to get hold of and Swiss refiners are confirming that silver supply is tight. What we must remember is that real physical trading volumes are low today. With the sideways move in prices, physical demand is not buoyant. But once gold clears $1,350 and silver $15.50, shortages are likely to arise.
Egon von Greyerz
Founder and Managing Partner
Matterhorn Asset Management
Zurich, Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 213 62 45
Matterhorn Asset Management’s global client base strategically stores an important part of their wealth in Switzerland in physical gold and silver outside the banking system. Matterhorn Asset Management is pleased to deliver a unique and exceptional service to our highly esteemed wealth preservation clientele in over 60 countries.
GoldSwitzerland.com
Contact Us
The domino effects of these conditions are costly. Low incomes, poorly funded schools, and weak family support for children lead to poor academic achievement, which leads to low productivity and low incomes of people who become economic burdens on the society.
Though there are bright spots in the American education system such as our few great universities, the US population as a whole scores very poorly relative to the rest of the developed world in standardized tests for a given education level. More specifically:
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...SnLafnH65pF9ak
Differences in these scores are tied to poverty levels—i.e., high-poverty schools (measured by the share of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch) have PISA test scores around 25% lower than schools with the lowest levels of poverty.
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...3k8lL8DNHyx79Y
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...kCq_pzn5H8aiT8
The stats that show that the US does a poor job of tending to the needs of its poor students relative to how most other countries do it are never-ending. Here are a few more:
These poor educational results lead to a high percentage of students being inadequately prepared for work and having emotional problems that become manifest in damaging behaviors. Disadvantaged students in the US are far more likely to report social and/or emotional issues than in most other developed countries, including not being socially integrated at school, severe test anxiety, and low satisfaction with life.
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...cIpMjDJP9GYOV8
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...ENr1uYevPlTuSQ
Scatters of Educational Spending and Outcomes for US States
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...yjN5LUDEf7EeCY
The income/education/wealth/opportunity gap reinforces the income/education/wealth/opportunity gap:
To me, leaving so many children in poverty and not educating them well is the equivalent of child abuse, and it is economically stupid.
The weakening of the family and good parental guidance has also been an important adverse influence:
Here are a few stats that convey how the family unit has changed over the years:
Bad childcare and bad education lead to badly behaved adults hence higher crime rates that inflict terrible costs on the society:
The health consequences and economic costs of low education and poverty are terrible:
These conditions pose an existential risk for the US.
The previously described income/wealth/opportunity gap and its manifestations pose existential threats to the US because these conditions weaken the US economically, threaten to bring about painful and counterproductive domestic conflict, and undermine the United States’ strength relative to that of its global competitors.
These gaps weaken us economically because:
In addition to social and economic bad consequences, the income/wealth/opportunity gap is leading to dangerous social and political divisions that threaten our cohesive fabric and capitalism itself.
I believe that, as a principle, if there is a very big gap in the economic conditions of people who share a budget and there is an economic downturn, there is a high risk of bad conflict. Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of populism of the left and populism of the right and often in revolutions of one sort or another. For that reason, I am worried what the next economic downturn will be like, especially as central banks have limited ability to reverse it and we have so much political polarity and populism.
The problem is that capitalists typically don’t know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don’t know how to grow it well. While one might hope that when such economic polarity and poor conditions exist, leaders would pull together to reform the system to both divide the economic pie and make it grow better (which is certainly doable and the best path), they typically become progressively more extreme and fight more than cooperate.
In order to understand the phenomenon of populism, two years ago I did a study of it in which I looked at 14 iconic cases and observed the patterns and the forces behind them. If you are interested in it, you can read it here. In brief, I learned that populism arises when strong fighters/leaders of the right or of the left who are looking to fight and defeat the opposition come to power and escalate their conflict with the opposition, which typically galvanizes around comparably strong/fighting leaders. The most important thing to watch as populism develops is how conflict is handled—whether the opposing forces can coexist to make progress or whether they increasingly “go to war” to block and hurt each other and cause gridlock. In the worst cases, this conflict causes economic problems (e.g., via paralyzing strikes and demonstrations) and can even lead to moves from democratic leadership to autocratic leadership as happened in a number of countries in the 1930s.
We are now seeing conflicts between populists of the left and populists of the right increasing around the world in much the same way as they did in the 1930s when the income and wealth gaps were comparably large. In the US, the ideological polarity is greater than it has ever been and the willingness to compromise is less than it’s ever been. The chart on the left shows how conservative Republican senators and representatives have been and how liberal Democratic senators and representatives have been going back to 1900. As you can see, they are each more extreme and they are more divided than ever before. The chart on the right shows what percentage of them have voted along party lines going back to 1790, which is now the greatest ever. In other words, they have more polar extreme positions and they are more solidified in those positions than ever. And we are coming into a presidential election year. We can expect a hell of a battle.
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...1X-iPOkkxDiAV0
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...JcIJHknmD3TtiI
It doesn’t take a genius to know that when a system is producing outcomes that are so inconsistent with its goals, it needs to be reformed. In the next part, I will explore why it is producing these substandard outcomes and what I think should be done to reform it.
Part 2
My Diagnosis of Why Capitalism Is Now Not Working Well for the Majority of People
I believe that reality works like a machine with cause/effect relationships that produce outcomes, and that when the outcomes fall short of the goals one needs to diagnose why the machine is working inadequately and then reform it. I also believe that most everything happens over and over again through history, and by observing and thinking through these patterns one can better understand how reality works and acquire timeless and universal principles for dealing with it better. I believe that the previously shown outcomes are unacceptable, so that we first need to look at how the economic machine is producing these outcomes and then think about how to reform it.
Contrary to what populists of the left and populists of the right are saying, these unacceptable outcomes aren’t due to either a) evil rich people doing bad things to poor people or b) lazy poor people and bureaucratic inefficiencies, as much as they are due to how the capitalist system is now working.
I believe that all good things taken to an extreme become self-destructive and everything must evolve or die, and that these principles now apply to capitalism. While the pursuit of profit is usually an effective motivator and resource allocator for creating productivity and for providing those who are productive with buying power, it is now producing a self-reinforcing feedback loop that widens the income/wealth/opportunity gap to the point that capitalism and the American Dream are in jeopardy. That is because capitalism is now working in a way in which people and companies find it profitable to have policies and make technologies that lessen their people costs, which lessens a large percentage of the population’s share of society’s resources. Those companies and people who are richer have greater buying power, which motivates those who seek profit to shift their resources to produce what the haves want relative to what the have-nots want, which includes fundamentally required things like good care and education for the have-not children. We just saw this exemplified in the college admissions cheating scandal.
As a result of this dynamic, the system is producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots, which are leading to harmful excesses at the top and harmful deprivations at the bottom. More specifically, I believe that:
Because of these two forces, the share of revenue that has gone to profits has increased relative to the share that has gone to the worker. The charts below show the percentage of corporate revenue that has gone to profits and the percentage that has gone to employee compensation since 1929.
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...MMUkkFl5f2L7so
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...8NdqsDSaT70mR4
3. Central banks’ printing of money and buying of financial assets (which were necessary to deal with the 2008 debt crisis and to stimulate economic growth) drove up the prices of financial assets, which helped make people who own financial assets richer relative to those who don’t own them. When the Federal Reserve (and most other central banks) buys financial assets to put money in the economy in order to stimulate the economy, the sellers of those financial assets (who are rich enough to have financial assets) a) get richer because the financial asset prices rise and b) are more likely to buy financial assets than to buy goods and services, which makes the rich richer and flush with money and credit while the majority of people who are poor don’t get money and credit because they are less creditworthy. From being in the investment business, I see that there is a glut of investment money chasing investments at the same time as there is an extreme shortage of money among most people. In other words, money is clogged at the top because if you’re one of those who has money or good ideas of how to make money you can have more money than you need because lenders will freely lend it to you and investors will compete to give it to you. On the other hand, if you’re not in financially good shape nobody will lend to you or invest in you and the government doesn’t help materially because the government doesn’t do that.
4. Policy makers pay too much attention to budgets relative to returns on investments. For example, not spending money on educating our children well might be
good from a budget perspective, but it’s really stupid from an investment perspective. Looking at the funding through a budget lens doesn’t lead one to take into consideration the all-in economic picture—e.g., it doesn’t take into consideration the all-in costs to the society of having poorly educated people. While focusing on the budget is what fiscal conservatives typically do, fiscal liberals have typically shown themselves to borrow too much money and fail to spend it wisely to produce the economic returns that are required to service the debts they have taken on, so they often end up with debt crises. The budget hawk conservatives and the pro-spending/borrowing liberals have trouble focusing on, working together for, and achieving good “double bottom line” return on investments (i.e., investments that produce both good social returns and good economic returns).
What I Think Should Be Done
For the previously explained reasons, I believe that capitalism is a fundamentally sound system that is now not working well for the majority of people, so it must be reformed to provide many more equal opportunities and to be more productive. To make the changes, I believe something like the following is needed.
a. Create private-public partnerships (including governments, philanthropists, and companies) that would jointly vet and invest in double bottom line projects that would be judged on the basis of their social and economic performance results relative to clear metrics. That would both increase the funding for and the quality of projects because people who have to put their own money on the line would be responsible for them. (For examples, see the Appendix.)
b. Raise money in ways that both improve conditions and improve the economy’s productivity by taking into consideration the all-in costs for the society (e.g., I’d tax pollution and various causes of bad health that have sizable economic costs for the society).
c. Raise more from the top via taxes that would be engineered to not have disruptive effects on productivity and that would be earmarked to help those in the middle and the bottom primarily in ways that also improve the economy’s overall level of productivity, so that the spending on these programs is largely paid for by the cost savings and income improvements that they create. Having said that, I also believe that the society has to establish minimum standards of healthcare and education that are provided to those who are unable to take care of themselves.
5. Coordination of monetary and fiscal policies. Because money is clogged at the top and because the capacity of central banks to ease enough to reverse the next economic downturn is limited, fiscal policy will have to be more coordinated with monetary policy, which can happen while maintaining the Federal Reserve’s independence. If done well, this will both stimulate economic growth and reduce the effects that quantitative easing has on increasing the wealth gap by shifting money and credit into the hands of those who have a higher propensity to spend from those who have a higher propensity to save and from those who need it less to those who need it more.
Looking Ahead
In assessing the position we are in, we can look at both cause-effect relationships and historical comparisons. The most relevant causes that are leading to the effects we are seeing are:
The last time that this configuration of influences existed was in the late 1930s when there were great conflicts and economic and political systems were overturned. For the fundamental reasons explained earlier, I believe that we are at the sort of critical juncture in which the biggest issue will be how we deal with each other rather than any other constraints.
There are enough resources to go around to deal with the risky issues and produce much more equal opportunity plus improved productivity that will grow the pie. My big worry is that the sides will be intransigent in their positions so that capitalism will either a) be abandoned or b) not be reformed because those on the right will fight for keeping it as it is and those on the left will fight against it. So to me, the biggest questions are a) whether populists of the right or populists of the left will gain control and/or have conflicts that will adversely affect the operations of government, the economy, and international relations or b) whether sensible and skilled people from all sides can work together to reform the system so it works well for the majority of people.
We will soon know a lot more about which paths are most likely because over the next two years there will be defining elections in the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the European Parliament. How they turn out will have significant effects on how the conflicts raised in this report will be dealt with, which will influence how money will flow between people, markets, states, and countries and will determine the relative strengths of most people and countries. I will be paying close attention to all this and will keep you informed.
Appendix: My Perspective On Double Bottom Line Investing
I felt that I should give some examples of good double bottom line investing so that’s what this appendix is about. From doing my philanthropic work, I see great double bottom line investments all the time, and I only see a small percentage of them so I know that there are vastly more. Since my wife and I focus especially in education and microfinance, my window is more in these areas than elsewhere though we have been exposed to many in other areas such as healthcare, the reform of the criminal justice system, environmental protection, etc. For example, a few of the good double bottom line investments that I came across are:
Since these areas are great double bottom line investments for the country, it would be great if they were brought to scale with government support. I believe that partnerships between philanthropy, government, and business for these types of investments are powerful because they would both increase the amount of funding and result in better vetting of the projects and programs. I know that I see plenty of good deals that I’d love to maximize the funding for that would be cost-effective for governments, other philanthropists, and businesses to support. For example, my wife and our philanthropy team are now working on an agreement in which the Dalio Philanthropies will donate $100 million to programs for the most underfunded school districts and for microfinance in Connecticut if the state donates $100 million and if other philanthropists and businesses in Connecticut also donate another $100 million. That will bring more money, better due diligence, more partnership to our Connecticut community, and positive expected net financial returns (after considering the costs of not educating and supporting our children well) for the benefit of the state.
[1] Actually, we broke it into many other subcategories and then aggregated them into these two groups for simplicity in presenting the results.
[i] https://wir2018.wid.world/part-2.html
[ii] Based on data from the Current Population Survey. https://cps.ipums.org/cps/
[iii] http://www.equality-of-opportunity.o...lity_paper.pdf, 34.
[iv] As of 2016; based on data from Survey of Consumer Finances.
[v] Income chart (on left) shows fiscal income shares. Data from World Inequality Database. (https://wid.world/country/usa/)
[vi] Data from Census Bureau
[vii] As of 2016; based on data from Survey of Consumer Finances.
[viii] Survey of Consumer Finances (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publi...lds-201805.pdf)
[ix] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/insti...pers/17-06.pdf
[x] https://www.oecd.org/social/soc/Soci...inFindings.pdf; estimates for China based on Kelly Labar, “Intergenerational Mobility in China”, (https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/...56982/document). Note that methodologies varied between countries in the OECD study.
[xi] US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1960 to 2018 Annual Social and Economic Supplements, History Poverty Tables, Table 3.(https://www.census.gov/data/tables/t...ty-people.html)
[xii] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/pub...23/err-256.pdf, 10.
[xiii] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/...child-poverty/
[xiv] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/
[xv] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/
[xvi] OECD (2016), PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, 231.
[xvii] OECD (2017), Educational Opportunity for All: Overcoming Inequality throughout the Life Course, OECD Publishing, Paris, 46.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264287457-en
[xviii] OECD (2017), Educational Opportunity for All: Overcoming Inequality throughout the Life Course, OECD Publishing, Paris, 60.
[xx] http://new.every1graduates.org/wp-co...18_FINAL-2.pdf
[xxi] http://cdn.ey.com/parthenon/pdf/pers...092016_web.pdf, 11.
[xxiii] Poverty data from Census Bureau SAIPE School District Estimates (https://www.census.gov/data/datasets...districts.html); graduation rates from Hechinger Report (https://hechingerreport.org/the-grad...ct-in-one-map/)
[xxiv] Note: Spending data is from the US Census Bureau and is current as of 2016. Test scores and proficiency data are from “National Report Card” assessments and are meant to be comparable across states. Data is from 2013. Only a limited sample of states have data for this Grade 12 assessment.
[xxiv] https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-a...er-health-care
[xxv] https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014...s-rank-higher/
[xxvi] https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/defa...hapter%205.pdf , 8.
[xxvii] https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploa...2018_FINAL.pdf, 4.
[xxviii] https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploa...2018_FINAL.pdf, 7.
[xxix] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...udy/610542002/
[xxx] OECD (2017), "D3.2a. Teachers' actual salaries relative to wages of tertiary-educated workers (2015)", in The Learning Environment and Organisation of Schools, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/eag-2017-table196-en.
[xxxi] https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/
[xxxii] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cma.asp
[xxxiii] Data based on Consumer Expenditure Survey
[xxxiv] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/
[xxxv] Private school spending data from: https://www.nais.org/statistics/page...s-at-a-glance/ ; Public school spending data from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...us-since-1990/
[xxxvi] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/
[xxxvii] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
[2] The remaining 14% lived with two parents in remarriages.
[xxxviii] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/...-family-today/
[xxxix] https://www.brookings.edu/research/t...soner-reentry/, 10
[xl] https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp...-1991-2007.pdf, 4.
[xli] The Pew Charitable Trusts, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility, https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/le...lcosts1pdf.pdf, 4.
[xlii] Calculations based on data from “World Prison Brief Database.” (http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest...xonomy_tid=All)
[xliii] https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/le...lcosts1pdf.pdf, 2.
[xliv] https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/le...lcosts1pdf.pdf, 4.
[xlv] As of 2015; Bridgewater analysis, based on data from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access...ality_Multiple)
[xlvi] Chetty, Raj, et al., “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014”, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2016.
[xlvii] As of 2015; Bridgewater analysis, based on data from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access...ality_Multiple)
[xlviii] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/he...re-system.aspx
[xlix] https://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Stati...Table_A-11.pdf
[l] https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...ts-of-poverty/
[li] https://voteview.com/data
[lii] Based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis
[liii] https://heckmanequation.org/resource...dhood-program/
[liv] http://cdn.ey.com/parthenon/pdf/pers...092016_web.pdf
[lv] For the purposes of this study, “low-income” students were defined as students whose family income was below 2x the poverty line at any point during their childhood. The study’s projections are based on comparing the life outcomes of children that were impacted by major school finance reforms in 28 states between 1971 and 2010 with those of similar children who were unaffected by the reforms. See https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/131/1/157/2461148
[lvi] Sourced from Grameen America standard 26-week loan amortization schedule, assuming full reinvestment of principal repayments over 5 years
[lvii] https://www.epi.org/publication/the-...re-investment/
[lviii] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537512/
Benjamin Israel Margolese
What Monetary Policy 3 (MP3) Could Look Like
As I’ve noted, the policy tools that were sufficient to stimulate the economy in the last several cycles probably won’t be enough this time around. Monetary Policy 1—cutting interest rates—is limited by very low/negative rates across the developed world that probably can’t be lowered all that much more. Monetary Policy 2—quantitative easing—is limited by already very low longer-term interest rates/expected returns on assets and some central banks (especially the ECB) running low on bonds they can buy given current political constraints. Also, it is relatively ineffective in getting money and credit to those who don’t have financial assets, and it contributes to the widening opportunity gap. For these reasons, I believe in the next downturn developed countries will need to turn to “Monetary Policy 3” (MP3). In this study we will 1) define MP3, 2) give examples of it, and 3) focus on what was done in the 1930s.
Monetary Policy 3 comprises monetary policies that are more directed at spenders than at investors/savers (the groups that MP1 and MP2 principally target). In other words, they are policies that provide printed money to spenders with incentives for them to spend it. These sorts of policies will undoubtedly be politically controversial for both central banks and governments. The big question is whether these policies will hurt or help productivity. For reasons explained in the book Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises, as long as countries have their debts denominated in their own currencies, these policies would likely work to smooth out economic downturns, and the only things that stand in the way are the limited capabilities of economic policy makers and/or the limited political abilities to do the right things, if the productivity produced is more than the amount of money and credit that is produced and spent. That’s why it’s important for policy makers to work through these political/other impediments and develop their “Plan B” now—what they’ll do when MP1 and MP2 don’t provide enough stimulus (e.g., buy equities, buy lesser quality debt, fund fiscal programs, etc.). Otherwise, working through those political considerations as the economy turns down might provide inadequate lead time, which can make the downturn much worse because there is nothing to offset the self-reinforcing downward pressures.
Below, I’ll share some of our prior research on what sort of forms these MP3 policies can take, updated with some recent examples.
Definition of Monetary Policy 3
Though most of us haven’t seen it in our lifetimes, it has existed in other lifetimes and other places. MP3 is a continuum of coordinated monetary and fiscal policies that vary who gets the money (private sector versus public sector) and how directly that printed money is provided (directly providing “helicopter money” to spenders versus more indirect means of financing spending). The following diagram maps many of the possible types of MP3 onto that continuum. In general, the more direct policies would be more effective, but also more politically difficult to do. And some of the least direct policies (or variants of them) have recently been used, but not at the scale that would likely be needed in the next significant downturn.
What MP3 Looks Like
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We’ll walk through those policies in more detail (including some historical cases in which the policies were used), starting with MP3 policies that are targeted to the public sector:
These MP3 policies support spending in both the private and public sectors. What follows is a laundry list of examples. To be clear, we aren’t recommending any of these; we are just giving you tangible examples.
These MP3 policies are targeted toward the private sector:
To reiterate, we aren’t offering any comments on the relative merits of these; we are just giving you a sense of the range and the number of historical cases that, if we were in the position of policy makers, we would be looking through. This examination process then has to consider what’s legal, and what’s politically acceptable, in each country. It’s a big job to work out what’s best, so that will take time. As a result, we believe that policy makers, especially central bankers, need to work hard on figuring this out now.
While we won’t offer opinions on each of these, we will offer our opinion that the most effective approach is fiscal/monetary coordination, because it assures that both the providing of money and the spending of it will occur. If central banks just give people money (helicopter money), that’s typically less adequate than giving them that money with incentives to spend the money. However, sometimes it is difficult for those who set monetary policy to coordinate with those who set fiscal policy, in which case other approaches are used.
As we look at these cases, keep in mind that sometimes the policies don’t fall exactly into these categories, as they have elements of more than one of them and they exist on the continuum mentioned above. There is not even a clear line of demarcation between MP2 (i.e., QE) and MP3. For example, if the government gives a tax break, that’s probably not helicopter money, but it depends on how it’s financed. There can be the government acting as the spender, with the central bank financing that spending without a loan—which is helicopter money through fiscal channels.
Part 2: Historical Cases
There are many historical cases of less effective MP1 and MP2 leading to cases of directing monetary policy to put I’d like to show you a bunch of historical cases on MP3 so you get a flavor of how they worked in the past without delving deeply into each because we would have to give you a big book of them to do that. The way I am going to do that is to first dig into Monetary Policy 3 during the Great Depression in the major economies at the time, and then superficially look at several other cases, including some QE cases that are beginning to cross the line to MP3 policies. What I will show you is long but interesting, and it includes how some things that we would consider implausible came about out of necessity. My hope is that in conveying such things we will all be able to open your thinking to a wider range of possibilities than you ordinarily might imagine. Because all of this material is rather long and wonky, I’ve posted it at www.economicprinciples.org for those of you who are interested. But since what happened in the global great depression is the most recent analogous case to today’s environment, I’m including that below if you’d like to examine just one iconic case.
Appendix: Detailed Historical Examples of Monetary Policy 3
We are now going to show you a large number of examples, some explained in more depth than others. They all exemplify the principles about MP3 that we just reviewed. If you find that there are too many, just skip the rest.
Example 1: In the US during the 1930s
As we’ve previously described, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies—especially devaluing the dollar versus gold in 1933—helped create a “beautiful deleveraging.” But by 1935, policy makers were already expressing concern about how the US might offset the next economic downturn. In fact, that year the term “pushing on a string” was coined by a US representative questioning Fed Chair Marriner Eccles, who was concerned that the Fed could stop an expansion but couldn’t do much to offset a contraction. In this section, we describe how the US complemented MP1 and MP2 (low rates and an increase in money) with coordinated, creative fiscal policy—and relied on fiscal and monetary coordination to pull out of the 1937 downturn.
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One of Roosevelt’s first major fiscal policy shifts was to engineer big debt write-downs as part of his “beautiful deleveraging” mix. He did that through a couple different policies. First, the US passed a law eliminating the “gold clause” from debt contracts. Up until then, most long-term debts had gold indexation clauses that would have meant the devaluation would increase nominal debt burdens significantly. Eliminating that clause kept debt burdens the same even as the dollar fell, effectively creating a broad-based debt restructuring. Of course, that meant that the government legislated the breaking of contracts in a way that benefited debtors at the expense of creditors. This case was taken to the Supreme Court and decided 5-4 in the government’s favor.
Second, in 1933 Roosevelt created an agency to aid underwater mortgage borrowers, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). This agency exchanged distressed mortgages for government-guaranteed bonds, purchasing the mortgages above foreclosure value, which encouraged lender participation. Then the HOLC would restructure the mortgages, lowering the interest rate and extending the term of the loan to 15 years (mortgages then typically had a 5- to 10-year maturity). In some cases (though not typically), the HOLC would also reduce the principal to keep the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for borrowers below 80%. The agency purchased 1 million loans, about 20% of all mortgages, spending $4.75 billion (approximately 8% of GDP).
Roosevelt also created large government programs that directly employed people. The most significant was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), started in 1935. It lasted until the start of World War II and represented spending equal to approximately 2% of GDP annually. The WPA was focused specifically on employment, as it mandated that all projects spend at least 90% of costs on labor. Most projects were infrastructure-related, though there was also funding for white-collar and artistic work. The program hired librarians, musicians, writers, seamstresses, teachers, researchers, doctors, architects, and more. At its peak, it employed about 3.5 million people, over 6% of the labor force.
Further stimulus came in 1936, with a large early payment of a veterans’ bonus. This program is a particularly good example of a government borrowing in order to make direct cash transfers to households. What the governments literally did was to give the veterans non-marketable bonds, which could be exchanged for an immediate payment or held until maturity, paying an above-market discount rate. Also, veterans who had previously borrowed from the government against their future bonus payment received interest forgiveness. Eighty percent of the bonds were cashed in 1936, and the average recipient received approximately $500, more than the median individual annual income at that time. In total, the program represented a fiscal stimulus equal to approximately 2% of nominal GDP. The bonus recipients appeared to have a high tendency to spend the bonus and often used it to make down payments on purchases with credit, like residential investment and car purchases.
Throughout this period, the US rolled out a number of other programs that used fiscal incentives and macroprudential easings to stimulate credit and spending. These programs both supported existing borrowers and encouraged new lending for residential investment:
Roosevelt’s fiscal spending programs were financed by a combination of spending cuts (Roosevelt cut back on the military early in his presidency) and deficit spending. This deficit spending wasn’t primarily financed by direct QE. The persistent gold inflows that followed the US’s devaluation increased the money supply: the banks, unwilling to increase lending to the private sector, significantly increased holdings of government debt to make a nearly guaranteed spread while funding government spending.
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Government Response to 1937–38 Downturn
In 1937, the US entered a significant downturn—stocks declined more than 50%, growth turned negative, and the US slipped back into deflation. We won’t discuss the causes of this downturn, as we’ve described them before, but reductions in the WPA employment program and the fading effects of the veterans’ bonus in 1936 were significant contributors, along with devaluations in France and Italy causing dollar appreciation, sterilization of gold inflows, and increasing bank reserve requirements.
In 1938, the US eased monetary and fiscal policy in response to the downturn. In February of that year, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. ended the gold sterilization program and began desterilizing the accumulated sterilized gold—moves akin to money printing. But policy makers discovered that their actions had very little effect—i.e., they were pushing on a string. From 1938 to 1940, increasing the money supply increased total bank reserves, but the new money was largely held as cash reserves, preventing it from flowing through to the real economy.
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The government also passed a $2 billion fiscal stimulus bill, which included a significant increase in the WPA program (it had its biggest year in 1938). While these measures had some effect, the initial improvement in the economy was muted. Industrial production did not recover to peak levels until late 1939, inflation hovered around zero until late 1940, and equities remained approximately 30% below the level of early 1937.
The eventual pickup in economic activity in the US seems largely attributable to World War II. Prior to the US entering the war, production and government spending increased in order to supply the Allies and prepare for potential war. Meanwhile, gold inflows accelerated as investors sought a safe haven from the political situation of Europe and as the Allies began to purchase American supplies (prior to the enactment of Lend-Lease in March 1941).
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Eventually, the common cause of World War II united the country and created a political consensus around policies of coordinated and extremely stimulative fiscal and monetary policy. The Federal Reserve summarized its “primary duty” in wartime as “the financing of military requirements and of production for war purposes.” Eccles, who was chair of the Fed through 1948, described his work as “a routine administrative job…The Federal Reserve merely executed Treasury decisions.” During World War II, government spending massively increased, and the money supply more than doubled. The Federal Reserve monetized government spending by maintaining a cap on long-term Treasury bond rates of 2.5% and short-term rates of 0.375%, and by stepping in to buy bonds when rates approached those levels.
Though the world was less globalized in the 1930s than it is now, the debt problems were then (like now) still global and interrelated. We could show you similar developments in a number of countries but, in the interest of brevity, will only touch on what happened in Japan and Germany. Similar things happened in many other countries.
For more historical examples, please visit www.economicprinciples.com
Employment Report Statement
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 263,000 in April, and the unemployment rate declined to 3.6 percent. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, construction, health care, and social assistance.
Unemployment Rate – Seasonally Adjusted
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The above Unemployment Rate Chart is from the BLS. Click on the link for an interactive chart.
Nonfarm Employment Change from Previous Month
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Hours and Wages
Average weekly hours of all private employees fell 0.1 hour to 34.4 hours. Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees was flat at 33.3 hours. Average weekly hours of manufacturers was flat at 40.7 hours.
Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers rose $0.06 to $27.77. That a 0.22% gain. Average hourly earnings of private service-providing employees rose $0.06 to $27.53, a gain of 0.22%. Average hourly earnings of manufacturers rose $0.02 to $27.47, a gain of 0.07%.
Average hourly earnings of Production and Supervisory Workersrose $0.07 to $23.31. That's a 0.30% gain. Average hourly earnings of private service-providing employees rose $0.07 to $23.03, a gain of 0.30%. Average hourly earnings of manufacturers rose $0.03 to $21.97, a gain of 0.14%
Year-Over-Year Wage Growth
For a discussion of income distribution, please see What’s “Really” Behind Gross Inequalities In Income Distribution?
Birth Death Model
Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report. For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid. Should anything interesting arise in the Birth/Death numbers, I will comment further.
Table 15 BLS Alternative Measures of Unemployment
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Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.
Notice I said “better” approximation not to be confused with “good” approximation.
The official unemployment rate is 3.6%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.
U-6 is much higher at 7.3%. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.
Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement, discouraged workers, and kids moving back home because they cannot find a job.
Strength is Relative
It’s important to put the jobs numbers into proper perspective.
Household Survey vs. Payroll Survey
The payroll survey (sometimes called the establishment survey) is the headline jobs number, generally released the first Friday of every month. It is based on employer reporting.
The household survey is a phone survey conducted by the BLS. It measures unemployment and many other factors.
If you work one hour, you are employed. If you don’t have a job and fail to look for one, you are not considered unemployed, rather, you drop out of the labor force.
Looking for jobs on Monster does not count as “looking for a job”. You need an actual interview or send out a resume.
These distortions artificially lower the unemployment rate, artificially boost full-time employment, and artificially increase the payroll jobs report every month.
Final Thoughts
The past several jobs reports have had wild fluctuations. This month the discrepancies strengthen.
Last month I commented: "For the last three months, jobs are up an average of 180,000 per month. Employment is up 54,000 per month."
In February, employment was 156,949. In April, employment was 156,645. That's a three month loss of 304,000 employees, 101,000 a month.
Last month I commented "Year-over-year employment went from 155,160 to 156,748. That's an average of 132,000 per month and slowing, if the trend holds."
In April, year-over-year employment rose from 155,216 to 156,645. That's an average gain of 119,000. The trend continues.
Jobs reports in 2019 have been much weaker than the headline numbers suggest. One set of numbers is wrong.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29
Authored by Gerald Dwyer via The American Institute for Economic Research,
Is Bitcoin doomed to failure? It is not hard to find commentary on the internet indicating that Bitcoin is bound to fail. The authors invariably point to aspects of Bitcoin’s implementation today and argue that the current state is not consistent with success.
I take these comments about Bitcoin as comments about private cryptocurrencies more generally and will treat them that way.
It is hard to foresee Bitcoin’s future.
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Ken Olsen said that "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" in 1977.It is easy to square that statement with computers of the day. Few would have found it worthwhile to have a computer in a dedicated computer room at a controlled temperature of about 65 degrees with backup power to avoid catastrophic damage. The statement is ridiculous in light of the computers in many people’s pockets today. A Samsung S8 is over 20 times more powerful than supercomputers of that day.
Many aspects of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more generally are likely to change in the coming decades. There is no reason to think that innovation in cryptocurrencies stopped with the creation of Bitcoin. There are issues. But it is not a large stretch of imagination to imagine some or all of them will be resolved in various ways.
It is fair to say that cryptocurrencies are not obviously likely to replace, for example, the dollar used in transactions in the United States given reasonably good monetary policy, a point made byWill Luther, for example. There is no obvious gain to people in the United States from changing to a different currency to buy groceries. A currency has to have problems such as hyperinflation in Venezuela for cryptocurrencies to become viable for use on a regular basis. Cryptocurrencies also are a good way to circumvent capital controls.
That said, it also is true that the current incarnation of Bitcoin has issues if it is to become a currency in common use anywhere. “Scalability” is a term that summarizes many of these issues. The number of separate transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain is quite limited. The maximum number of Bitcoin transactions is currently capped at about 400,000 per day. This is trivial compared to the number of transactions that Visa processes, about 150,000,000 per day.
The amount of electricity used in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mining algorithm is as much as some small countries use. A further substantial increase in electricity use would be a large increase in the demand for electricity worldwide.
Both of these things are problems remaining to be solved.
While increasing the size of blocks in the blockchain would be one way to solve the problem of the number of transactions, that would create a massive blockchain copied by millions of users, which would require a huge amount of storage space given current technology. Maybe digital storage space will continue to dramatically fall in price. Maybe transactions will occur on sidechains off the main blockchain. Maybe transactions will occur in institutions similar to today’s cryptocurrency exchanges. These exchanges already have far more trades than cryptocurrency blockchains. Maybe something else will arise. We don’t know today what solutions entrepreneurs will come up with. If we did, they would exist now.
Electricity use requires a different solution. Mining — the proof of work used in Bitcoin — is a way to reach consensus on the state of the blockchain. New mechanisms for resolving issues such as this arise frequently. For example, new auctions have been designed to divvy up the spectrum for use by smartphones. One possible replacement known today for proof of work is proof of stake. Proof of stake is a method of reaching consensus based on the ownership of the asset, not the use of resources to win a contest. Innovations are quite likely.
Two recent articles claim that Bitcoin is doomed to fail because of other issues related to mining. Both are wrong.
One article by Atulya Sarin nicely lays out an argument for a death spiral, an argument that also can be found elsewhere. A lower price for Bitcoin lowers the return from mining, so miners suffer losses and stop mining. Eventually it does not pay to mine. The problem with this simple statement of the argument is that it is based on the total expenditure by miners including mining equipment. Some purchases of mining equipment that were profitable when the price of Bitcoin was above $10,000 would not be made today. But the payments for the equipment are sunk costs that cannot be avoided by no longer mining. If using the mining equipment generates revenue greater than the cost of running the equipment, it will be kept in use. This revenue may not cover the cost of the purchase, but that cannot be helped.
A better version of the argument made by Sarin is that changes in the difficulty of mining are made roughly every two weeks and are determined so that the previous blocks would have been found at the rate of one every 10 minutes. If the price of Bitcoin falls far enough, it may pay to withdraw from mining and wait for the difficulty to decrease. All miners might withdraw because the electricity cost of mining is greater than the value of the new bitcoins awarded. This argument ignores the transactions fees paid by holders of bitcoins though, which would increase to compensate the smaller number of miners. Production of bitcoins might decrease, and validation of transactions might take longer in the short term, but mining will continue as long as there is a demand for transactions, in part because transactions fees can increase.
Another article, by Kevin Dowd, argues that there is a fundamental flaw in mining, namely that it is a natural monopoly. This recent article is a short summary of an argument made earlier, which I addressed in a blog post at the time. In short, bitcoin mining is a game that can be won or lost when there is competition. There is a risk of losing the race to create a new block. If there were only one miner, the game could only be won and there would be no risk. Therefore, a single miner or a big mining firm has an advantage because the larger the miner, the less risk of losing.
There is a disadvantage, though, to having a mining monopoly. A monopoly in a cryptocurrency would destroy or radically change the cryptocurrency because a major selling point of cryptocurrencies is the impersonal, somewhat anonymous aspect of transactions. Someone buying or selling a cryptocurrency need not trust anyone else involved in the transaction, including miners. If a monopolist was doing the mining, it would be very important to trust them. Requiring such trust would radically alter the basis of cryptocurrencies and possibly kill it. Everyone other than a possible monopolist has an incentive to avoid a mining monopoly even if the possible monopolist doesn’t see it that way. And miners do prefer not to obtain a monopoly, at least sometimes. Bitcoin mining firms have reduced their capacity when they have gotten too close to having a dominant share in mining. Even absent voluntarily limiting mining capacity and mining, there are other ways to limit miners from having too big a share of new blocks.
Recent developments in mining of Ethereum Classic illustrate how a miner’s share of the market can be limited. A version of the natural-monopoly problem short of a complete monopoly is called a “51 percent attack”: a miner has more computing power than the rest of the network and can alter the consensus achieved to create gains for himself at others’ expense. The cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic has had an actual 51 percent attack based on concentrated computing power in the hands of one miner. The short-term solution has been to increase the time to finalize transactions. One possible long-term solution is to alter the rules for accepting blocks. In short, innovations will occur to adapt to the problem and impose costs on miners who have too large a share of mining.
There is no reason to think that cryptocurrencies will disappear. They are useful now for some things. While hardly perfect, Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies in existence now have no fundamental flaw. Moreover, cryptocurrencies will change in unexpected ways to become increasingly useful to people.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29
Authored by Rob Urie via Counterpunch.org,
In late 2017, actor Morgan Freeman announced in a video created by a who’s who of senior U.S. Intelligence officials that Russia had attacked the United States and that ‘we’ were at war. Freeman, whose net worth is said to be about a quarter-billion dollars, claimed that ex-Soviet ‘authoritarian’ Vladimir Putin, bitter about the dissolution of ‘his’ country, was behind the attack. The terms ‘attack’ and ‘war’ were not qualified as metaphors.
The crudeness of the appeal - provoking naked fear of invading hordes of godless communists led by an evil dictator, had a retro quality that undid thirty years of technocratic upgrading of American agitprop Where is the Reagan-era Patrick Swayze packing a grenade launcher when you need him? Or going back a bit further in agitprop history, where is Kevin McCarthy with a panicked warning about your neighbors going to sleep as good Americans and waking up as communists stooges of the Kremlin?
Within weeks of Donald Trump’s electoral victory the ‘true American’ press, in the form of the Washington Post, revealed that it had a list of known communists who had infiltrated the U.S. government political websites that were acting as witting or unwitting agents of the Kremlin, current company included. One could be forgiven for imagining that the ‘authoritarian’ Donald Trump was behind the smear. But no— it appears to have been Ukrainian ‘patriots’ with ties to both the Democratic Party leadership and actual European Nazisthat struck this blow for freedom.
Freedom through censorship might seem an odd construct until it is understood that Kremlin agents are everywhere. By 2017, my friends from New York were suddenly afraid to venture out of Manhattan for fear of encountering a ‘Trump voter.’ (This is true). Never mind that a half-century of neoliberal predation had left the economy a shadow of its former self, the only possible explanation for Trump! was Russian subversion of our electoral process. That the U.S. ranks low in terms of free and fair elections has nothing to do with ‘Russian interference.’
The inclusion of Mr. Freeman as a modern-day Minuteman signaled that the target audience for the video wasn’t marginally literate ‘deplorables’ swilling beer in their underwear as they watched Dancing with the Stars, but rather the people who spend their days in offices or on airplanes. Because they wear suits, these good people must be smart and sophisticated, not the ‘low information’ voters who see a picture of an eagle in front of a waving flag and nod their heads approvingly with whatever nonsense follows (irony alert).
At the height of George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, there wasn’t a trading floor on Wall Street where CNN or Fox News wasn’t blaring 24/7 that WMDs had been found in Iraq. Better a million dead Iraqis over there than a mushroom souffle for lunch over here. Those who remember ‘Poppy’s war,’ Gulf War I that buried tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts alive in the desert after Iraq had surrendered, may remember that it was also Wall Street that hosted the ticker tape paradethat followed that glorious victory.
Any of the intelligence officials associated with the Morgan Freeman video could have acted in it as competently as Mr. Freeman. Most had spent more than a bit of face time lying under oath to congress. But no mention was made of the fact that they were behind the video. Mr. Freeman, wearing casual clothes with the hipster single earing in each ear, was the face of ‘the people’ rising in righteous anger at the afront to ‘our democracy.’ That no one had died in ‘the attack’ likely made the video the least lethal project these intelligence officials had participated in in their adult lives.
A few Democrats and ‘the left’ had remained outside of the George W. Bush administration’s propaganda effort in the run up to the Iraq war. The demonstrations held before the war began were the largest in history. In contrast, the people who found the administration’s argument for war compelling were liberal hawks amongst the urban bourgeois and the people who fought it. The overlap between these two groups n’existe pas. And it was the latter who brought back stories of the clusterfuck quality of the war to its liberal proponents comfortably ensconced in their armchairs of freedom.
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That propaganda effort was politics 101, divide and conquer. As Mr. Bush put it,you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists. That 9/11 was 1) both a rational response to American foreign policy in the Middle East and 2) planned and financed by business associates of the Bush family, would seem to muddy the waters of binary divisions. Following, as Mr. Freeman put it, you’re either with us, or you’re with Putin. Never mind the business intereststhat tied the intelligence agencies to U.S. based energy companies competing with Russia to supply Europe with oil and gas.
The glorious victory of freedom over tyranny that was the Obama administration led coup in Ukraine was never over anything as base as material interests. That Democratic Party wunderkind and 2020 presidential aspirant Joe Biden was cobbled to neocon warlordess Victoria Nuland in the months preceding it, and Joe’s son Hunter joined Ukrainian oil and gas patriots to slay the Russian bear soon thereafter, is what the gods call serendipity. That Russia stepped in to protect its Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol, Crimea proves its treachery.
One might have imagined that the historical break that Mr. Trump’s election represented, as put forward by the Democratic operatives who lost the election, would speak for itself. Of course, racism, sexism and misogyny have no place in American history— just watch Mr. Freeman’s / the U.S. intelligence agency’s video for a clear recounting of the unalloyed virtues of American democracy. When Israeli strongman freedom fighter Benjamin Netanyahu gave the U.S. Congress instructions for future U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in 2015, the word ‘collusion’ wasn’t mentioned even once in New York Times reporting on the event.
The first round of Mueller indictments against Russian internet advertising firms produced charges that stood little chance of being contested. An analogy is to indict figures from history, say Plato or the Marquis de Sade who, because they are dead, pose little risk of asking for the evidence against them. But surprise! Concord Management, one of the firms charged by Mueller, responded with counsel seeking discovery. Mr. Mueller used a procedural move to precludehanding his evidence over to actual lawyers. Lonely are the brave.
The Hamilton 68 ‘Russian interference’ tracking website turns out to be affiliated with the German Marshall Fund which itself is filled with ex-Obama administration officials with ties to the National Security Council. The German Marshall Funds runs the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a neo-con think tank that includes John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. The U.S. State Department and NATO are major contributors to the German Marshall Fund.
Of course, everyone knows that these coalitions of Democratic Party insiders and intelligence agency officials are behind most of the ‘Russian interference’ hysteria because the New York Times and Washington Post put them front and center as their sources, right? Surely no reputable newspaper would give front page coverage to unproven allegations made by political operatives working against the Party and personages currently in power, right? Doing so could be perceived as taking sides in an internecine political battle to undo the democratic will of at least a bit more than a quarter of eligible voters.
It was John Podesta’s emails that were alleged to have been hackedand released to news agencies during the 2016 campaign that would have deeply embarrassedClinton campaign officials if they were capable of embarrassment. Yes, this is the very same John Podesta that ‘advises’ several of the groups cited by the New York Times and Washington Post as sources for stories about who hacked someone named John Podesta’s emails. Of course, everyone knows that ‘hacked’ is a euphemism for ‘leaked.’
Why Democratic strategists preferred Morgan Freeman as the face of righteous outrage, rather than John Podesta’s brother Tony, is a mystery for the ages. Brother Tony, who was set to be charged with former Trump something-or-other Paul Manafort with colluption, a newfangled amalgam of collusion and corruption, decided that omerta is for suckers. Brother Tony squealed to Robert Mueller, decidedly complicating circumstances for Mr. Manafort, if making Brother Tony laud-worthy amongst his fellow Democratic Party lobbyists.
Of course, the intelligence-Democrats’ insight that Morgan Freeman is a better front-man than omerta-lite Brother Tony, or any of the other sixty-something pallid white guys in suits who have spent their careers making life miserable for something called ‘humanity,’ proves they are anti-racist, right? It is universally known that Bob Mueller loves both Muslims and immigrants so much that he rounded up and threw a thousand of them in jail without charges following 9/11 to protect them from being not in jail. He has that much heart.
Likewise, the CIA has long been known for promoting black and brown people - from the material to the ethereal plane. Responding to earlier red menace incursions, CIA ‘advisors’ sent four million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians to what Christians speculate is a better place. Later, in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua the CIA provided free education through the School of the Americas to peasant-scholars in how to be tortured to death with dignity. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands graduated and went on to decompose with dignity.
The NSA heroes who keep us safe from authoritarian creeps who would otherwise skirt the law to create illegal spy programs to gather and keep information on people suspected of no crime in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution and existing law and then repeatedly lie about doing so under oath to congress certainly deserve the trust of the American people. If they say that Pump (Putin + Trump) represents an existential threat to our freedom, then let them shut down the opposition press, arrest anyone they think might be inconvenient to American business interests and unseat a leader that a lot of people voted for. As the saying goes, freedom ain’t free.
Support for increasing the power of the FBI, CIA and NSA and local and regional police departments while Donald Trump has been in office has been bi-partisan. If the national Democrats believed a word of their bullshit that Mr. Trump is a foreign agent, they would be, in the parlance, ‘traitors’ to give him more power. By the time that ‘high information voters’ figure out that they’ve been had, it will be on to the next diversion. Reportedly, about the same proportion of the population still believes the collusion story as believes that WMDs were found in Iraq.
Here’s the punchline - even if you believe the worst accusations of Russian interference in U.S. elections, they are orders of magnitude lower than the influence of American oligarchs and the state of Israel. If the Democrats want Donald Trump out, they should run someone that people will vote for. I would try to bring in some of the nearly half of the electorate that is eligible to vote but that doesn’t. Calling them deplorable seems a weak strategy for getting them to vote for you. In fact, it seems remarkably like Donald Trump’s disparagement of immigrants. But as a card-carrying puppet of the Kremlin, what do I know?
COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: I wrote the following on April 1, 2003 SO , I consider myself a trained and experienced expert.
Good Morning
I can certify that this research source has been extraordinary in it's accuracy. Sometimes leading publication of it's information by days before it is confirmed by many sources both on the internet and in the main street mainly fake media.
I have had personal experience in the fraud by the USA and Britain concerning WMD.
Please read my letter of April 1, 2003
Email of April 1, 2003:
Yesterday to my great sadness and I am sure to the American soldiers who accidentally killed those women and children by shooting at them when they didn't stop.
The American soldiers thought they were another wave of suicide Iraq combatants.
Sadly their deaths and all those who have needlessly died for no good reason other than the immoral and bankrupt policies of the US Government. Tony Blair and George Walker Bush bear the responsibilities of their actions. G-D will judge them as the Pope stated before this tragic and unnecessary war started.
All of us reading this email in our respective lots in life, have a responsibility to act as best we can to stop the killing of innocent women, men and children. Let us not forget that the brave and loyal soldiers of the United States Of America and Great Britain are also victims of this historic tragedy. They just are doing their duty.
America for the first time in their glorious 227 years as a great empire since they were created by the founding fathers in 1776, has now attacked another nation without justification and pre-emptively. The first time in their long history that they have done so.
For Canadians reading this we can discuss some issues in public through the Canadian House Of Commons. For me I would like to see the NDP Party of Canada ask the Canadian Government as represented by the Liberal Party Of Canada and Prime Minister Jean Chretien, answer a question about the chemical agent, VX, one of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
From the research that I have read in the attached files, as Dr Glen Rangwala has so clearly pointed out.You can refer to VX for yourself by clicking on it in the Index of Dr Glen Rangwala's research file attached in the forwarded email with hot links to the material, I conclude that whatever VX that the Iraq Government had was produced prior to 1991,with the assistance of the US and UK Government. The VX produced was estimated to be about 4 tons maximum but it could have been much less than that. Iraq never publicly disclosed how much of the VX was used against Iran during their conflict for political reasons. The accepted quantity of VX that may be left at present time is 1.5 tons as is often mentioned by the US and UK Governments.
In the research of Dr Glen Rangwala, he states based on the information contained in the public records of UNSCOM, IAEA and IISS that VX degrades. So in all likelihood even if Iraq still holds some VX, sincethe best scientific minds say that after 12 years at the most, any VX left would have lost it's potency. It is quite clear to me that since Iraq produced it's VX prior to the first Gulf war in 1991, that 12 years and more have passed since the Iran-Iraq war, that
when the American and British Government talk to the world about the great danger Iraq poses to the world with it's 1.5 tons of unaccounted for, VX that they are not being truthful. Surely the CIA most also know this.
For Americans reading this, I would like to see someone ask US Senator Jay Rockerfellow of West Virginia,to ask the FBI to also ask President Bush and his administration, are they aware of the VX potency after 12 years issue. Since Senator Rockerfellow has already asked the FBI to investigate why President George Walker Bush used information concerning Iraq's nuclear capability that was obtained from Nigeria. Fortunately the world learned through the UN inspectors report of March 7, 2003 that the information used by President Bush in his State Of The Union speech of January 2003 was not valid in that the documents used as background was forged. George Tenet of the CIA decided that these documents were questionable, however President Bush still choose to use this misinformation in his State Of The Union Address.
Maybe Helen Thomas, a great and courageous US citizen and White House reporter might like to ask Ari Fleisher during the daily press briefing at the White House how long does VX gas retain it's potency ?
I won't feel responsible for the next child murdered in Iraq because I know that since March 7, 2003 at 11:52 PM when I started this research and information project with my two good American writer friends, that I have given my all to try to prevent the war.
Unfortunately I have failed in that task. However I am not willing to stand idly by and watch more Iraq children and their mothers and fathers including American and
British soldiers lose their life for reasons that are only truly known to the American and British Government of President George Walker Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.
May G-D bless us all and give us added strength and wisdom to find a way to stop this unjust and unauthorized war.
The UN failed to stop the war.
Will we also fail ? I hope not because if we do, their will be another victim. The great nation of The United States Of America, a friend to Canada and Canadians as Canada has been and still is to America.
America is now in grave danger of losing their position in the world, as holder of the world's only reserve currency, the US dollar.
The Euro is starting to take over that position as nations such as Iraq and North Korea already use the Euro as their reserve currency.
Iran is thinking about converting to the Euro from the US dollar.
Russia in the last six months has reduced their holding of American dollars from 70% to 50% , replacing the 20% with the Euro and putting 10% of their reserves in gold. It should be noted that since 1971 when President Nixon untied the US dollar to gold, for the first time in American history.
The Clinton administration had a strong US dollar policy that was directly responsible for the stock market bubble through the assistance of the Federal Reserve led by Alan Greenspan. When President Bush took power in January 2001, American interest rates were 6%.
They now are 1.25%. The Fed is in a jam now. If they raise interest rates now, the massive American housing debt bubble crashes. If he lowers the rates it will exacerbate the decline of the US dollar. If the US dollar falls to 85 cents to the Euro as many world economists have predicted, inflation will reign again as never seen before. Since gold is the only thermometer of inflation, since 1971 America has had no instrument to alert American's to the reality of inflation. If the great debt bubble of the American Government and it's citizens collapses then there is deflation. So the US Government as stated by Fed Governor Bernake during a November 2002 speech, "The US Government has a secret weapon, it is called a printing press"
That is the real reason that the US dollar has declined from $1.08 to the Euro in December 2000 to the point where today positions are reversed and it is now
$1.08 to the US dollar in favor of the Euro. The US dollar is in great danger of going the way of the German mark during their war when they hyper inflated away their mark currency. The US Government needs the help of the world each day to the tune of 1.5 Billion dollars each day to support their dollar.
If the world decides to start switching over to the Euro as it seems to be doing now, the US dollar will collapse and the unfortunate end of the United States as a world power will begin to happen.
You may ask yourself why am I telling you all this ?
I will now answer you. The real reason for this Iraq war in my honest opinion is not Iraq oil per say. However by getting control of Iraq's oil wells, the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world, the US Government will be able to lower the price of oil, reduce Opec's influence on higher oil prices. Allow the US and Japan to have cheaper oil for their economies, Russia as a oil exporter, has a cost of oil to produce of about $18.00 dollars a barrel. Cheap oil is bad for their economy. Also by lowering the price of oil to levels of $12.00 or so, the Opec nations receive less revenue due to the effecttive breaking of the Opec Cartel. In conclusion this war is not about oil. It is about the dismantling of Opec and thus lower oil costs for the American economy. It is about who controls the world's reserve currency, The US or Europe.
It is about PNAC as stated by members of the US Government. This is public information. People such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary Of State, Donald Rumsfeld and Mr Pearle have convinced President Bush of the correctness of the PNAC "Pact For A New American Century"
History and G-D will be the judge of our actions.
Sincerely yours
Benjaminis Israel
April 13, 2018 9:09 AM
We can CLEARLY see HISTORY is repeating itself 15 years later. May G-D help US ALL !!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Rangwala
Glen Rangwala
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Glen Rangwala is a University Lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University in England. Trained in political theory and international law, he completed a doctorate on political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. His academic work focuses on Palestinian politics from 1967 to 1977, and the rhetorical relations between the West Bank resident population and the leadership of the Palestinian resistance movement in exile. He has co-written a monograph, Iraq in Fragments(Cornell University Press, 2006), on the fragmentation of the Iraqi polity following the invasion of 2003. He has also published on international humanitarian law, comparative human rights law, Iraq and nuclear weapons. He is a member of the Labour Party and an editor of Labour Briefing.
He is involved with Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (dissolved and replaced by Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq in October 2003) and Arab Media Watch. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war Rangwala wrote articles in newspapers and appeared on British TV, especially in the context of the "dodgy dossier" prepared by Tony Blair's government. Rangwala had discovered that this dossier was mostly plagiarised from a postgraduate student's thesis [1] and articles in Jane's Intelligence Review (with minor falsifications) [2] and traced back the people who had edited the dossier [3]. He submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs when it investigated the British government's information policy leading to the Iraq war [4]. He has since published a number of articles on the Iraq war, especially in The Independent [5].
Together with Dan Plesch, he contributed an article to A Case to Answer, a report commissioned by MP Adam Price on which impeachment procedures against Tony Blair are based. The report assembles evidence that Blair misled the British Parliament and people over reasons for the 2003 war on Iraq mainly from the PM's own statements and evidence disclosed by the Hutton Inquiry and the Butler Report.
BUTLER REPORT:
Conclusions of the Review[edit]
The review was published on 14 July 2004. Its main conclusion was that key intelligence used to justify the war with Iraq has been shown to be unreliable. It claims that the Secret Intelligence Service did not check its sources well enough and sometimes relied on third hand reports. It says that there was an over-reliance on Iraqi dissident sources. It also comments that warnings from the Joint Intelligence Committee on the limitations of the intelligence were not made clear. Overall it said that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear", and that judgements had stretched available intelligence "to the outer limits".
It says that information from another country's intelligence service on Iraqi production of chemical and biological weapons was "seriously flawed", without naming the country. It says that there was no recent intelligence to demonstrate that Iraq was a greater threat than other countries, and that the lack of any success in the UNMOVIC finding WMDs should have prompted a re-think.
It states that Tony Blair's policy towards Iraq shifted because of the attacks of 11 September 2001, not because of Iraq's weapons programme, and that the government's language left the impression that there was "fuller and firmer intelligence" than was the case.
The report indicated that there was enough intelligence to make a "well-founded" judgment that Saddam Hussein was seeking, perhaps as late as 2002, to obtain uranium illegally from Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6.4 para. 499). In particular, referring to a 1999 visit of Iraqi officials to Niger, the report states (6.4 para. 503): "The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible."
Stauber and Rampton, however, noted that "the Butler Report offers no details -- not even an approximate date when this may have happened, thus giving no way to assess its credibility. The British have also declined to share any information about this intelligence, even with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was responsible for prewar monitoring of Iraq's nuclear capability. In any case, the Congo's uranium mine was flooded and sealed several decades ago, which means that Iraq would not have been able to obtain uranium there even if it tried."[3]
This intelligence (which had controversially found its way into George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech) had previously (before September 2003 [C. May, 2004]) been thought to rely on forged documents. The Butler Review stated that "the forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made." (6.4 para. 503) Taking into account the American intelligence community’s findings on the matter, it is true that in December 2003, then CIA director George Tenet conceded that the inclusion of the claim in the State of the Union address was a mistake. (CNN.com, 2003) However, Tenet believed so, not due to any compelling evidence to the contrary, but rather because the CIA (criticized concerning this matter by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq [Schmidt, 2004]) had failed to investigate the claim thoroughly; however again, the Butler Review states (6.4 para. 497) in 2002 the CIA "agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought."
In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents (6.4 Para. 502). (Times Online, 2003)
The report did not blame any specific individuals. It specifically stated that John Scarlett, the head of the JIC should not resign, and indeed should take up his new post as head of MI6.
Criticism[edit]
Appointees[edit]
Private Eye magazine expressed misgivings against members of a committee personally appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The magazine was particularly critical over the choice selection of New Labour Party politician and close acquaintance Ann Taylor, writing "Taylor is hardly a disinterested observer: she was herself involved in the famous 'September dossier' that explained Blair's reasons for going to war."
On 18 September 2002 an official in Blair's office sent this memo to chief of staff Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell: "The PM has asked Ann Taylor to read through the dossier in draft and give us any comments. He stressed that it is for her and for her only and that no one else outside this building was seeing it in draft.
I'm contacting John Scarlett to work out how this should happen — needs to be tomorrow." Taylor went to Scarlett's office at 8 o'clock the next morning, read the dossier and gave her comments to the spy chief — who then passed them on to Blair. She advised that it "needs to come across as an impartial, professional assessment of the threat", and that the PM should "undercut critics" by explaining why Saddam should be stopped now.
So the only person outside No 10 and the JIC who was trusted to help with the dossier (and who also expressed a wish to see Blair's critics undercut) is now sitting on the inquiry into its contents. One wonders why Blair didn't go the whole hog and add Alastair Campbell to Lord Butler's team of independent inquisitors.[4]
Lynne Jones (MP) was also critical of Taylor's involvement in subsequent inquiries, stating: "It is self-evidently bad practice to appoint someone to a committee when their previous conclusions are under scrutiny".[5][6] A piece in the Western Mail was more direct, noting of a joke that followed the publication of the report: "When you call the Butler, you get what you ordered".[7]
Uranium conclusion[edit]
Nuclear expert Norman Dombey, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex, said the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete. "The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines".[8]Dombey also noted that Iraq already had some 550 tonnes of uranium compound sitting in its gutted Tuwaitha nuclear research center:
Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme. ... Nuclear weapons are difficult and expensive to build not because uranium is scarce, but because it is difficult and expensive to enrich U235 from 0.7 per cent to the 90 per cent needed for a bomb.
Enrichment plants are large, use a lot of electricity and are almost impossible to conceal. Neither British security services nor the CIA seriously thought Iraq had a functioning enrichment plant that would have justified all the noise about nuclear weapons we heard before the war. When I read of the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, I thought it smelt distinctly fishy. ... It was a gigantic red herring.[9]
London's Evening Standard daily newspaper dismissed the report's findings, under the front-page headline "Whitewash (Part Two)", saying Lord Butler had effectively thrown Tony Blair "a lifebelt" by claiming that Saddam was indeed trying to procure uranium from Niger in 1999 to build a nuclear bomb, and concluding that illicit "material may be hidden in the sand".[10]
External links[edit]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...pencil.svg.png
CLOSING COMMENTS FROM BENJAMIN: After seeing and understanding what was attempted against President Donald John Trump prior to his election on November 8, 2016 and more so after, WE see the Evil and how History keeps repeating however now, WE understand and see what lengths people with unchecked POWER will use and as a result We now live at the end of days.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-gold-standard
Trump’s Fed Picks Have Fond Memories of the Gold Standard
Stephen Moore and Herman Cain are outside the economics mainstream in wanting to peg the dollar to gold.
ByJohn Maynard Keynes, the secular saint of left-leaning economists, called gold a “barbarous relic.” Milton Friedman, his counterpart on the right, said a gold standard for the dollar “is not feasible because the mythology and beliefs required to make it effective do not exist.” In 2012, a survey of leading economists by the University of Chicago Booth School of Management found that 34 percent disagreed with a gold standard and 66 percent disagreed strongly.
Their stance on gold encapsulates how far the two are outside the mainstream. It doesn’t mean they’re wrong—just that most economists of the left, right, and center who have looked into restoring the gold standard have concluded that it would be a bad idea.
Then again, the person who wants them on the Fed is more open to the idea. While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump told GQ, “Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”
Moore was an adviser to Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign and is a distinguished visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He hasn’t been formally nominated to the Fed board, but National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow said on April 2 that the administration is “fully behind” him, despite recent news reports about his failure to fully pay alimony and taxes.
Trump’s other pick is even more of a shock to the establishment. Bloomberg News and other news media reported on Thursday that Trump intends to nominate Herman Cain, former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza, for another open seat at the Fed. Cain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. He promoted a 9-9-9 plan, which would have replaced much of today’s tax code with 9 percent taxes on sales, individual income, and corporate income.
Cain is all-in for gold. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that he wrote in 2012 after he had dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, in part over accusations of sexual harassment, he wrote: “Gold is kryptonite to big-spending politicians. It is to the moochers and looters in government what sunlight and garlic are to vampires.” Moore, who holds a master’s degree in economics, is less of a gold bug than Cain.
In a 2015 interview, he said he would prefer to peg the dollar to the value of a basket of commodities, not just gold. But he did say a gold standard would be “a lot better than what we have now.”
One often-used argument for a gold standard is that it disciplines governments, preventing them from printing a lot of paper money to pay their debts. Right now the world uses “fiat” money, which has value only because governments say it does. (For example, it can be used to pay taxes.) Under a strict gold standard, paper money could be redeemed for physical gold. If you didn’t trust the government to maintain the value of the dollar, you could ask for gold instead.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see the problem with the gold bugs’ argument. If they were right, the world would be experiencing hyperinflation right now as unconstrained governments run their currency-printing presses.
Instead, the world’s leading central banks can’t even manage to raise inflation to their target levels of 2 percent a year. If anything, outright deflation appears to be the greater risk.
Trump’s new picks for the Fed are a win for Austrian School followers and others who think Nixon made a big mistake by taking the dollar off the gold standard. But they’re alarming a lot of other people.
Paul Krugman tweeted out Bloomberg’s article about the Cain pick today with this comment: “Meanwhile, I didn’t think Trump could do worse than Stephen Moore for the Fed. But never underestimate his resourcefulness.”
COMMENTS FROM BENJAMIN: This is another reason that The DEEP STATE must destroy and remove President Trump because he is heading to change what President Richard Milhous Nixon did on August 15, 1971 when he removed the US Dollar from the Gold Standard and here we are 48 years later with the US Dollar soon to go the route of all other Fiat Currencies since the beginning of currencies replacing Gold and Silver.
The value will be ZERO !!! THINK ABOUT THAT.