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The Founding Fathers' Vision of Prosperity Has Been Destroyed
The
Founding Fathers not only fought for liberty and justice, they also
fought for a sound economy and freedom from the tyranny of big banks:
"[It
was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on
the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English
and . . . the Revolutionary War."
- Benjamin Franklin
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."
- John Adams
“If
the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their
currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and
corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all
property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers occupied”.
— Thomas Jefferson
"I believe that
banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing
armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored
to the Government, to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson
“The
Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever
understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to
them and their kind as, quote, ‘friends of paper money. They hated the
Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in
winning our independence from England and King George, we could never
truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. ”
-Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet “Economic Solutions”
As I noted last year:
Everyone
knows that the American colonists revolted largely because of taxation
without representation and related forms of oppression by the British.
See this and this.
But
- according to Benjamin Franklin and others in the thick of the action
- a little-known factor was actually the main reason for the
revolution.
To give some background on the issue, when Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1764, this is what he observed:
When
he arrived, he was surprised to find rampant unemployment and poverty
among the British working classes… Franklin was then asked how the
American colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor
houses. He reportedly replied:
“We have no poor houses in the
Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them,
since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither
beggars nor tramps.”
In 1764, the Bank of England used its
influence on Parliament to get a Currency Act passed that made it
illegal for any of the colonies to print their own money. The colonists
were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold.
Anyone lacking in those precious metals had to borrow them at interest
from the banks.
Only a year later, Franklin said, the streets
of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were
in England. The money supply had suddenly been reduced by half,
leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these
workers could have provided. He maintained that it was "the poverty
caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament
which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the
Revolutionary War." This, he said,
was the real reason for the Revolution: "the colonies would gladly
have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that
England took away from the colonies their money, which created
unemployment and dissatisfaction."(for more on the Currency Act, see this.)
Alexander Hamilton echoed similar sentiments:
Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary, said that paper money had
composed three-fourths of the total money supply before the American
Revolution. When the colonists could not issue their own currency, the
money supply had suddenly shrunk, leaving widespread unemployment,
hunger and poverty in its wake. Unlike the Great Depression of the
1930s, people in the 1770s were keenly aware of who was responsible for
their distress.As historian Alexander Del Mar wrote in 1895:
[T]he
creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary
assemblies...coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts
made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America [were] acts of
defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was
thereafter impossible . . . [T]here was but one course for the crown
to pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of
rebellion...Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and
prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a
reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution.
they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!And British historian John Twells said the same thing:
The
British Parliament took away from America its representative money,
forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be
legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins ...
Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies . . . discontent
became desperation, and reached a point . . . when human nature rises up
and asserts itself.In fact, the Americans ignored the British ban on American currency, and:
"Succeeded
in financing a war against a major power, with virtually no 'hard'
currency of their own, without taxing the people."Indeed, the first act of the New Continental Congress was to issue its own paper scrip, popularly called the Continental.
Franklin
and Thomas Paine later praised the local currency as a "corner stone"
of the Revolution. And Franklin consistently wrote that the American
ability to create its own credit led to prosperity, as it allowed the
creation of ample credit, with low interest rates to borrowers, and no
interest to pay to private or foreign bankers .
Is this just ancient history?
No.
The
ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has
largely been lost to private bankers. The lion's share of new credit
creation is done by private banks, so - instead of being able to itself
create money without owing interest - the government owes unfathomable
trillions in interest to private banks.
America may have won the
Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it
fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.
As economic writer and attorney Ellen Brown has tried to teach to Obama, Schwarzenegger,
and anyone else who will listen, the way out of the economic crisis is
to stop paying interest to private banks for the creation of credit,
and to return to the system of government-issued credit used by the
Founding Fathers to create prosperity for the people and to gain
independence from their oppressors.
(And see this).
As I wrote in July:
The U.S. has become a a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, a banana republic, a socialist or fascist state ... which acts without the consent of the governed.
This essay focuses on economics, but - obviously - the other ideals of the Founding Fathers have been abandoned as well. See this and this, for example.
Note: If we can't implement public banking, let's at least return to a gold standard.
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thanks for the link
I'm not so sure they weren't just the banksters of their age. The revolutionary leaders were all men of wealth, no commoners need apply.
Alexander Hamilton was one of the greatest banksters of all time.
Would you have preferred Jefferson's agarianism? The whole crux of the Hamilton-Jefferson dispute can be seen in the U.S. Constitution of 1789 vs. the Confederate Constitution of 1861. The first gave the fed. gov't the sole right to create money and regulate its value, as well as the right to regulate int'l trade and make other legislation pursuant to the general welfare. The Confederate Constitution, on the other hand, specifically prohibits tariffs, national banking (in favor of private creditors), and internal improvements (public works.) There's the American System or the Confederate (British) system - pick one.
I don't see how that makes the Confederate constitution particularly British, apart from the free trade perhaps. Your broader point, though, is well made. Agricultural /rentiers/ had been ruling the world and creaming the profits since at least the Bronze Age; rhetoric from the likes of Jefferson about the menace of tyrranical bankers may have been resentment of the new, competing group of oligarchs more than anything else. Which doesn't necessarily mean they were all wrong, of course. The more populist form of agrarianism isn't all that hot either: it tends to produce bitter, beady-eyed, economically stagnant countries, at least as soon as all the free land runs out.
Perhaps you should read this, "Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt". Review: http://mises.org/daily/3209
That article is typically imbecilic Austrian trash. Does it even matter that Jefferson asserted that the U.S. must remain an agrarian economy, supplying Europe with raw materials, rather than become industrial? His support for a continuing slave-based, raw materials economy is undeniable. So when a man puts forth an economic system that makes 95% of us black slaves or poor whites, should we even give a shit about his musings on debt?
+1,000
Can I reproduce your graphic?
Sure anytime, please attribute though ;-)
So, it would be good if the gov. could directly create money, out of thin air, and use it to pay for things, without borrowing and paying interest?!?!? You thing there would be no inflation?!?!
this seems bad intuitively simply because the truth has been purposely hidden from us. But rather than argue about the hypothetical results of govt printing money, first consider, right now, currently, private banks create money out of thin air.
If you do not believe this, spend some time reading the work of economist Steven Keen, which even fiscal conservative Mish agrees with, the paltry reserves banks need to stay solvent actually follow lending, they do not precede it, financial data proves it.
So the power GW and Ellen Brown is suggesting giving to the govt already has been granted to private banking cartel, and all good and evil of suggest money power already occurs in our economy. Under this monetary regime where banks create credit/debt, which over 90 percent of the modern money supply, sometimes we have inflation and sometimes we have deflation, but always the profits of money creation go to the banks.
Consider this indisputable fact, even now the FED, private banking cartel that we have given right to create our currency, creates "our" money from then air, lends it to private banks at no interest. The banks then take this free principle and buy Treasuries with this thus getting interest on money they were given...in other words, the interest on the Treasuries is pure profit at no risk...this is a mainstream reported, if somewhat ignored, fact.
So the FED creates as much money as the banks want, and they we pay interest to those banks for our govt debt (and personal debt). If nothing else, why do we have to pay a middle man? Any interest paid to US banks who have gotten free money from FED is completely wasted money, banks get money for nothing and Tbills for free.
We had inflation in housing when banks were creating housing dollars, i.e. mortgages from the money the FED gave them. Now we have deflation in housing. If the same thing had happened on a govt sponsored fiat currency, at least the taxes woudl be lower as the interest payments on the money would have sufficed to fund the govt, instead of Wall Street fat cats skimming a "tax" off us all.
So we already have a fiat currency, credit/debt created by banks. Whether or not a fiat currency is a good idea or not, at the very least, we should not have to pay banks any more than management costs on servicing lending contracts.
No reason to pay interest on Treasuries for our own money. Having democratic control of money printing can be no worse than letting a few rich elite call all the shots.
Perhaps more accurately we have debt currency rather than a fiat currency.
So, what in your opinion stops inflation? All of the interest due on the Debt, taken out of our GDP thru Taxation?
If the state created only enough new currency to keep up with economic growth and spent it, interest free, into the economy through public works projects, etc .... there would NEVER be any inflation. Inflation is a consequence of increasing amounts of currency chasing a finite amount of goods and services.
Everyone should read Stephen Zarlenga of the American Monetary Institute to understand what a truly honest monetary system looks like.
www.monetary.org
"If the state..."
I don't care how well the rest of it works, you just shot your foot clean off.
Trust the state? Can we please leave such foolishness behind forever?
The force of the people can, and should, bend the state to their will. what else do we have?
Yes, GW fell off his horse here and into a huge pile of horse shit. Too bad for him, for ZH, and its readers.
Gotta dig out accordingly.
I'd like to hear from Free Radical again. Really liked that one about the People of the Lie.
Hey slick, do you even know what inflation is - cuz' GW here just explained it to you. It is the growth of money not corresponding to new goods/services - if the money/credit corresponds to new real wealth it is NOT inflation. The whole beauty of a national banking system is that it can create money without taxation, debt, or inflation.
Then let's federalize the Fed.
Brown shows there would be no inflation of the states only created money for actual creation of goods and services.
No Sale. under that arrangement, we have a super-fiat currency. The State issues all they want, whenever they want, and we are to trust them that they will do precisely what is good for us. Been there, done that.
The only real answer is commodity-based currency (gold, silver, corn, whatever) - something with actual value behind it.
I think you mean "if" not "of" and that is a pretty big "IF" considering it hinges on self-restraint, honesty, integrity, and accountability. The power to create paper money corrupts.
Economist Gary North has thoroughly discredited Ellen Brown as nothing more than a "Greenbacker," and any notion that credit issued ex nihilo by the government would prove any less disastrous doesn't understand the first thing about money or the soundness thereof.
But if it's "Centralization of credit in the hands of the state" that you want, then here's your man: http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html
Ellen Brown is a lawyer. I have never known one lawyer that could even balance his own check book.
Most that I have dealt with were too busy adjusting my checking account, so they didn't need to worry about their own.
exactly. another pig in lipstick.
Could be at the COMMUNITY LEVEL:
7 Questions About Public BankingThanks for that link.
That is probably one of the best references on the topic (debate / non-debate) I have seen. The references and apposing points are covered. Having said that perhaps a tad bit more Austrian perspective at the end would have been welcome. The discussion on HOW a comodity like gold which is dug from the ground (a mine) is impacted by the supply demand and costs associated with the mining and refining process itself, and therefore is quantity limited by the economics that it supports as a form of exchange.
Tom Woods (Von Mises Institute)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzExlEsIKk
Joe Solerno (Von Mises Institute)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToEgZnMUuno
Gary North says such and such about Ellen Brown - who gives a flying fuck? GW here has put the issue right in front of our faces: the Founding Fathers (Franklin, Washington, and Hamilton in particular) favored and created a national banking system - the ever so dreaded "money out of thin air" - and the First and Second Bank of the U.S. existed from 1791-1836. The gold standard, on the other hand, was the chosen monetary system of our British Imperial adversaries. Can the Austrians/classical liberals stop pussying out for once and just say that our Founders supported policies they consider communist, whilst their ideal was upheld by the Empire we broke away from? Or would that just be too honest?
FDR, its your buddy, Chopper. I come in peace, my friend. I've got some genuine thoughts on this issue that i wish to put forth. I appreciate your dedication to the debate as you have clearly been doing your homework and growing evermore informed by the moment. again, i would prefer to keep away from any name-calling if that is possible. I'm not here to tell you why you are wrong, but rather to here what you genuinely have to say about how i see things on this topic. hopefully, i will not regret this posts and we can have a constructive discussion without insulting each other in creative ways. perhaps another time. right now, i'm most interested in boiling this debate down to simple points so that we can isolate the issues and perhaps build upon a more sound viewpoint of how things should be in relation to how they are now. anyway, here are my thoughts if you've got time to give them a read.:
In my mind, fiat paper currencies are simply a bi-product of the desire for control under a tax regime. the Welfare State, a byproduct of fiat money, is often used to justify the existence of fiat paper money. However, the major reason that fiat "legal tender" exists is because 'barter' cannot be collected as payment by our overlords. In other words, large governments, and privately owned central banks, need a standardized currency so that they may tax us into serfdom. This is the only reason that "money" exist. otherwise, folks would simply barter with anthing they wished, including gold and silver, as they have for thousands of years.
further, if a finite amount of gold/silver are bartered only for productive efforts by clever or hard-working individuals, then unproductive individuals (dumb and lazy) will simply not gather any gold or silver for bartering elsewhere (for food and shelter). Of course, an inability to gain food or shelter (barring any philanthropic intervention) limits the ability of an individual to procreate. In other words, unproductive workers will not be able to feed their children; or, if they do have children, then their children will starve (barring any philanthropic intervention).
This dynamic forces unproductive individuals to either change and become productive, or starve and become extinct; this basic system of barter discourages unproductive, anti-social behavior, and encourages peaceful, productive behavior. Productive individuals are paid in a finite amount of gold/silver, or with any other valuable asset (tobacco leaves?) or service (a returned favor), and move up the socioeconomic ladder.
Productive individuals will (in general) have many more children because they can feed them (for example). Upon their death, this accumulated savings of gold/silver will be divided among their children. If the individual children are not productive themselves, however, then eventually (perhaps over several generations) they will exhaust their inheritence of gold/silver and move down the socioeconomic ladder.
After all, it cost gold/silver in barter to obtain food and shelter, so even a large amount of gold/silver will dwindle as it is peacefully traded to other productive individuals for their goods and services. Importantly, if they (the children of a productive benefactor) loan this inherited gold or silver to an unproductive enterprise then it is lost. However, if they finance aproductive operation then they are rewarded for their good decision with a return of more gold/silver. As the 'risk-taker' they win. The borrower wins from the capital backing of his/her idea. The customer wins by gaining a valuable good or service (that otherwise would not have existed) in return for peacefully trading their gold/silver. EVERYBODY WINS.
Of course, this is very different than what we have now. Today, a wealthy child can be given shares in a bank, for example. This bank can "fractionally reserve counterfeit" 9 whole units of fiat paper money for every 1 unit of true 'wealth' that has been deposited. In essence, the individual who deposits 1 unit of wealth into a bank for safekeeping has earned this through peaceful, productive behaviour. However, the banker has not produced any good or service. No true wealth has been traded, only destroyed when the bank is allowed to lend 9 units of paper money to borrowers in return for interest that is paid in units of wealth (from productive behavior).
It is important to note that a depositor actually finances the destruction of their own wealth by enabling the counterfeiting. Additionally, the banker can make at least 8 bad loans but, if the 9th loan returns both principal and interest, then the banker can still manage to return the original depositors unit of wealth and pocket the difference. Of course, this is very different than all other (non-banker) individuals who must chose borrowers with great care or risk losing each unit of wealth entirely. Finally, if a banker does get all 9 loans wrong and this 1 unit of wealth deposited is absolutely lost forever, then the banker can simply close as a business with no liability to themselves resulting in the taxpayer (other productive individuals) making the depositor whole again under the letter of 'the law'.
Only fiat currency can enable this type of counterfeiting at the expense of the poor, for example, and the most productive individuals who have no such privilege to 'legally' counterfeit, because only paper money can be multiplied out of thin air. Gold and silver cannot. In other words, fiat paper currencies favor the existing rich bankers and their children.
Without fiat paper money, the existing rich would need to teach their children truly productive behavior if their children were going to succeed like everyone else. When gold and silver are utilized as items for barter (rather than fiat paper money), an unproductive child of wealth will continue downward in their trajectory of dwindling resources until they demonstrate productive behavior, and only then will they reap the rewards in gold and silver in the same way as someone else (who may have come from lessor means than them, for example). Re-empowering gold and silver as both simple and natural items for barter ensures this fair process and prevents counterfeiting by the rich at the expense of the poor.
Importantly, all productive individuals with gold/silver can make individual value judgements as they relate to helping their neighbors in need. Unlike the Welfare State, productive individuals can descriminate between the widow/orphan versus the drug addict.
Further, productive individuals who wish to pool their resources for mutually beneficial public works projects, for example, will do so at their own risk because the endeavor will only be possible with a surplus savings of gold/silver rather than the counterfeiting that takes place today. As we know, counterfeiting hurts the most those individuals who are born with the least fiat paper money by retroactively enslaving them through the debasement of their hard-earned wealth.
The only two true and honest purposes of a bank are to (1) keep a productive individual's gold or silver safe from robbers for a fee, or (2) match an individual lender of gold or silver to and individual borrower of gold or silver for a fee. All other activities including centralized money planning, fractional reserve counterfeiting, and fiat paper money are designed by bankers to serve bankers (and their children) at the expense of those on the bottom.
A spirit of neighbors rewarding neighbors for productive behavior (that which perpetuates mankind) along with neighbors punishing neighbors for unproductive behavior (that which burdens our progress) is the closet we can come, in my mind, to perfecting the organic efficiency and stability of decentralized and peaceful free trade for the purpose of advancing civilization within the boundries of earth and perhaps beyond.
Opening up our regional economies to competing currencies, including gold and silver, and eliminating the fraudulent practices aforementioned, will be the greatest step towards restoring liberty in America again where it once flourished without tyrannical central bankers and their fraudulent and wicked ways.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10489
http://www.save-a-patriot.org/files/view/whofed.html
Nicely expressed, sir.
Been away all day - and not at that damned Colbert/Stewart rally that clogged up the whole transportation system around here. I will post a whole article in the next few days that will more clearly outline my (FDR the avatar and the real guy) thinking on money; I'm trying to put it together now.
sounds great, buddy. looking forward to it.
GB used the Talley Stick with great effect for centuries. It was their reversion to gold that cause turmoil as it could be monopolized.
I don't follow your argument. Surely, tally sticks are the definition of the monopolisation of money - the tally sticks were split, and the government kept half. If the government had lost half of a tally stick it became instantly worthless.
Monopoly by government is still monopoly.
Glen Beck used tally sticks??? I though FOX paid their shills in blood and pantyhose.
The gold standard was the chosen monetary system of EVERYONE, not just the brits.
The problem wasn't the gold standard - it was that the brits suddenly shrank the money supply. Paper money is superior to no money in such circumstances... for a while.
As for the continentals - they went the way of all unbacked paper currencies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency
Continentals were great for doing what governments always do - pay for war by diddling the people accepting payment in them. In this case it was the US revolutionary government, so we rather partisanly think of it as a 'good' thing.
Anyone holding continentals got soaked, however.
The institution under question is the national banking system of 1791-1836 (and perhaps variations of it during Lincoln, FDR, JFK.) The continentals used during the 1775-83 war are not even part of that. Can anyone tell me why the amount of a particular yellow metal should be the basis of the money supply, rather than the ability of the population (given its resources and technological level) to create new wealth? I can only assume the world economy has been in one long free-fall since 1931, when the gold standard ceased to exist.
The problem with unbacked currency is that its controllers cannot withstand the temptation to create more and more of it, at the expense of the citizens at large. This is the case whether its the government who owns the printing press, or a private bank, or a quasi-fascist entity such as we have now.
There's nothing particularly magical about gold - it just suits being money better than anything else (fungible, divisible, portable, durable, and inherently valuable, at least in the sense it's difficult to create (it has to be mined) and difficult to counterfeit). Its almost entire uselessness is also a bonus - it doesn't get used up, unlike silver, platinum, oil, plutonium, etc.
The gold standard didn't cease in 1931, btw - it ceased in 1971. And yes, the value of the dollar HAS been in free fall ever since. And so has the living standards of the average American, viewed relative to productivity gains and overall increase of wealth.
Big Jim,
+10 on gold. But having been influenced by adults of the 30's and witness to the decades since, IMO for the average citizen including all classes, times (so far) are at least as good as they have ever been. When was the last time you saw some digging ditches professionally with a shovel? On construction sites, I see 4 or 5 guys standing around while one operates a big piece of power equipment. Automation (robotic) is also doing a lot for some forms of production like autos. Painting was once a bad job; now it is a matter of properly covering and maintaining the joints and programing of a robot sprayer in its closed vented line station.
The first McDonalds hamburgers were about the same as today's but they didn't have all the other food choices. I found the grilled chicken salad to be pretty good if you don't have it too often. The food problem today is obesity, not hunger.
The kinds of thing I do miss would be the quality of popular music general disipline brought to the arts and the relative simplicity of life. Singers couldn't recorde 4 or 5 versions to get it right and had to do their own sound effects. I can't fix my own car anymore-special tools required. I even had trouble figuring out how to change a headlight bulb.
Medicine today is something you would NEVER want to give up. Polio, TB and a host of other infectious diseases are gone. And SEX was for people that didn't mind if they had children. And people who can't have children by natural means have options today.
Money, even gold, is only valuable as an agreed upon medium for exchange of goods and services with you neighbors. If you don't like the current situation, work on your representation in Congress.
Sorry, it's a bit late, but I'm not sure what you're getting at, here... are you suggesting if we go back on a gold standard, we lose all the technology we have today?
we've achieved progress despite all of the inflationary headwinds. printing money is a massively destructive practice which undermines productive behavior. wealth in not multiplied when it is divided.
lol I was wondering the same thing
The gold standard did indeed cease in 1931 (its full-fledged version died in 1914, because the gold coin standard of the 20's had dollars and pound sterling serve as a monetary base as well.) The 1971 change to which you refer was Nixon taking us off the GOLD RESERVE STANDARD - the monetary system established in 1944 at Bretton Woods by FDR and friends. Under that 1944-71 system nations had to clear their current accounts deficits with one another with gold (or face devaluation), thereby preventing one nation from consistently being in deficit, as we have been since. I would point out that the U.S. and other Bretton Woods nations experienced growth in real terms during 1944-71 that have never been matched. Your contention that governments cannot stop themselves from creating inflation via fiat money is just that - a contention; it continues to sidedtep the historical fact that our government has used fiat currency, in conjunction with other policies that have since been abandoned, to create growth with little or no inflation.
No, your namesake FDR demonetised gold domestically by confiscating his citizens' gold in 1933 (before devaluing their money by 69% in 1934... but that's another story). It was illegal for them to own monetary gold in excess of $100, except in the form of "rare and unusual coins"
However, as other countries could exchange their ounces for gold, the dollar was still backed by gold; and, as all other major currencies were pegged to the dollar, by extension they were too. During this period there was indeed very little inflation, and a lot of growth; however, to pay for the Korean and Viet Nam wars, and LBJ's Great Society, the US did inflate their supply of dollars greater than the amount of gold backing them, and the US gold reserves started draining out of the US. Nixon slammed the gold window shut in 1971... and since then the dollar has lost something like 80% of its value.
Domonetizing gold domestically - that's the fucking definition of ending the gold standard; the gold standard means that not only is gold used for international balance of trade but ALSO as the monetary base domestically. The 1944-71 system is NOT the gold standard and it was undermined by the 1958 decision by the U.S. and Brit gov'ts to open their capital accounts, leading to the huge Eurodollar market of the 60's accounting for the high ratio of dollars to U.S.-held gold.
YOU wanted to know what made gold special as a basis for money.
The whole point is that if every dollar printed represents a fixed xth of an ounce of gold, held in a vault somewhere, it stops runaway monetary inflation (unless a vast quantity of gold suddenly turns up from somewhere, as it did in Spain after the conquistadores brought back all the gold from the New World)
Whether you allow your serfs, no, sorry, citizens to exchange their paper for the gold is irrelevant.
Hence, Bretton Woods was a gold-backed system - which the US cheated on to some extent by inflating their currency.
But nowhere to the extent they've been doing ever since 1971. NOW do you get it?
I get it now BigJim - you're incapable of understanding the principles of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the only thing capable of pulling us out of a financial armageddon presently. Keep obsessing about private ownership of gold, you fucking lephrechaun.
LOL, I bet you look a lot more leprechaun-like than I do.
Sorry you're incapable of understanding my explanation of why having a 'natural' brake on the production of money will limit inflation of said currency, but then again I'm not a trained teacher. Perhaps someone else can step in here and help FDR understand basic monetary theory.
But, meanwhile, in the spirit of friendly enquiry, could you please explain to all your eager students how a renewal of the Bretton-woods monetary system would have prevented MBS, CDOs, low interest rates, robo-signing, Viet Nam (<- trick question there!), LBJ's Great Society (ooh! Another trick question!), the CRA, GSE's like Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, etc, etc, ie, the stuff that got us into our present situation?
Answers, on a postcard, to:
Mr. Leprechaun,
Fascist Control,
New Dealsville,
FDRLand