“Defending the dollar” may well be in the minds of some neocons, or at least their battle cry in order to sell agenda of imperialism (enabling war profiteering for the insiders) to a population that just might be opportunistic and morally bankrupt enough to believe that the ways to the riches is through robbing other people of the world. Neoconservatism is at its root based on terrible economic theories. Just like when they were young and were still liberals, Neocons believe the solution to problems is government intervention, while being completely blind to the side effects of such interventions. Government intervention did not eliminate poverty in the inner cities 30+ years ago, and government intervention can not bring democracy or even pro-west alignment to Iraq today. Just like 30+ years ago, the cost of government intervention is destroying the dollar. Here we see the public education system doing a terrible disservice to the public: even today, it is taught in schools that the “oil crisis” of the 70’s was the result of some tin pot dictator slamming us with oil emargoes when in reality it was a dollar crisis that drove every commodity price skyward regardless its production source. The logic consequence of that bad education was of course, this time around, “we” have to have boots down the ground and hold the oil price down. Well, the bloody experience in Iraq proves that the theory is completely bankrupt. Just like 30+ years ago, metal prices and food prices are going up just as fast as oil . . . metal that are not from the middleast, and food that are produced in the US no less.
The real lesson here is that, the cost of enforcing the dollar, the extra printing needed to keep the boots on the ground to force people take something that they don’t want, makes the dollar even weaker. The proper way to make dollar strong is by making it an attractive store of value, so that people all around the world would buy dollar and invest in dollar-denominated assets for capital growth. That means, we need low taxation and low inflation. That’s how we can make dollar strong; what’s more, no spilling the blood of our youths necessary.
Your prescriptions are of course correct. But their goal in invading Iraq and trying to start a war with Iran is not to strengthen the dollar. Their goal is the perpetuation of their scam. Their scam makes the collapse of the dollar inevitable, but their egos are such that they think they will be the one with the chair when the music stops. If their choice is between doing something that has the chance of allowing the scam to continue a little while longer versus simply giving up on the scam entirely to prevent economic collapse, they’ll choose the former. Their contempt for the rest of humanity is such that spilt blood doesn’t enter into their calculations. They probably even privately think the human race could do with a little more natural selection.
Also note that I’m not necessarily talking about the neocons. The neocons are professional intellectuals. They don’t determine policy. They are being used to determine policy. The people who fund neocon thinktanks and buy neocons thier media exposure are the ones determining policy. The neocons get a healthy cut of the action, but they too are pawns. (How’s that for a mind-bender?)
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” – Nathan Mayer Rothschild
if government is goint to tax anyway…maybe all who post here are tax avoiding rebels, i dont know…more power to you i guess if you are.
would not a money that is more difficult for the govt to manipulate and serve its own ends be desirable over the govt’s money product?
if those who post here do pay the govt with its fiaty money - would there be a preference for the market to influence the money suply (albeit a govt mandated money type - a commodity in this instance) and have the govt only mint money?
I fail to see how the current monetary system is an answer to this. Countries who’s currencies are pinned to the dollar experience this same sentiment in relation to the US.
This is stupid. Gold isn’t used as a currency, so the “value” of it can’t be compared to one. If gold was a marketable currency you’d see a lot more demand for it (which would give it a lot more value).
Equally stupid. You don’t have to do either (and you can’t “increase value”. that’s done on a marginal, agent oriented basis) all the government would have to do is say 1 dollar is redeemable for x ammount of gold. (where the ratio of gold per dollar reflects the dollars in the market to the ammount of gold on reserve).
I’ve heard this argument before. It sounds like “there isn’t enough gold in the world to buy everything”. Things is, it doesn’t need to. The gold money would be used for exchanges. One doesn’t purchase all the stocks on the NY exchange in a single transaction!
I’m not sure what that means for the value of gold though. I suspect that we will have deleveraging and all prices in terms of fiat currencies will go down (including gold). At the moment, since gold isn’t used as money, it’s only the fear of the end of the fiat system that drives the price as well as industrial and jewellry uses. That could mean that the price goes up a lot as people rush out of their fiat currencies into hard currency. Equally people could buy other asserts though such as houses, cars, farms, baked beans etc. However, if people consider houses and cars etc as deflating, they may just choose gold anyhow which is what could give gold a counter-deflationary pressure. Gold may be seen as a good portable store of wealth in disasters. Certainly some see war and/or civil unrest ahead. For those, gold may be better than other fixed and less portable assets.
That’s more or less where I am at with my thinking on it at the moment. One thing is for sure - we don’t need the value of gold to increase in price so that one guy could front up to the cashier with his bag of gold and purchase the world :). The world will always be more valueable than all the gold.