What’s a GS?
So we put this big basket of commodities in a giant refrigerator we build under Fort Knox…
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Gold doesn’t depreciate, literally. bury a bar of gold, go back a few thousand years later, you have a dirty bar of gold. Makes it a reliable store of value, as proven over thousands of years now. Add in its pliability and usefulness in multiple areas, and it’s utilitarian even at times when its value for trading is reduced.
Now, that’s not to say that’s any way to run an economy, particularly on the macro level.
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But if the Zombie Apocalypse hits, would you rather have 5 pounds of gold, or five pounds of flour, sugar, coffee, salt, etc?
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The gold brick. Again, utilitarian. Can use it to bash in the head of the poor sucker who chose the flour, sugar coffee and salt. Then you’ve got it all!
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And to the intern who probably did the real work.
One thing, I don’t go strutting around proclaiming my economics expertise, being quite aware I have none. But objective experts in general tend not to push easy answers because they know easy answers tend to have serious drawbacks. It’s like a law of physics or something. 
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You can’t spell moron without Stephen Moore…
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Who will rid us of this meddlesome “economist”?
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You appear to have misspelled shill…
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I know it has its uses. As an inert metal it does not corrode, and so it withstands time and the elements. It is prized in jewelry, and its non-corrosive qualities make it useful in electrical contacts.
But my question was about its function as a backer of currency and a monetary system.
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Sorry! GS = gold standard. Fixed it above. Thx!
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You fix it by
- Ending Citizen’s United and constantly work to keep big money as far from politics as possible (a battle that is continuous).
- Eliminating or eviscerating the Electoral College
- Eliminating gerrymandering
Once they are done you have the chance for a government that represents the majority and not the minority as it has now become and you have the Constitution to protect the rights of that minority.
That isn’t exactly the way it was founded (original limits on who could vote, compromises to get the slave States to sign on) but that is where the philosophical underpinnings lead.
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This guy is so clueless I am embarrassed for him, as he clearly lacks any ounce of shame. What’s clear is that he has not done any real thinking about monetary systems.
The US has a fiat system of paper money based entirely on faith in the central bank and the Federal Treasury to pay debts from tax receipts. Moreover, it has become the de fact reserve currency of the world. This allows the U.S. very important capabilities that other countries and economies simply do not have, namely:
- The ability to borrow and repay in our currency.
- A constant demand for our currency because international payments are based on it. This made it extraordinarily difficult for the USSR to operate because they knew that in the eventuality of a war with the US, the USSR might not be able to buy any exports during a war if all their US dollar based accounts were frozen (thus, resulting in the creation of a Eurodollar banking system in Europe).
The second we abdicate this fiat system to a peg would mean the destruction of our ability to engage in prolonged deficit spending or to run a trade deficit.
Someone should ask Steve Dipsh*t Moore, what US trade deficits or surplusses were like when we had a currency peg to a commodity (i.e. the gold standard). Answer: There were none because it would have resulted in a bankrupt Treasury.
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Most appointed positions in government can be filled with people who are not super qualified because they are going to be surrounded by experts and long time staffers who can guide them, but membership on the Federal Reserve Board is different. We need real experts on the board not hacks or talking head clowns.
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One of the ironies here is that people other than the chair mostly have a very narrow list of things they can talk about for attribution. And details of fed policy aren’t on that list. So if Moore got on the board he would have to mostly stop being a talking head.
I wonder how his clearance investigation is going.
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Yeah Krugman has had several good articles talking about how incompetent both these guys are and all decent economist types know it.
Jebus to even encourage folks to think a gold standard would be good is insane and I’m not an economist and have never even played one on TV!
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Something some of us might remember who were born earlier. Before George Herbert Walker Bush ate crow and bent the knee to Ronald Reagan, to be his VP nominee and VP for 8 years, he coined the phrase for what is still the post Reagan GOP Economic theory: Voodoo Economics. Stephen Moore is a Voodoo Economist with a Master’s Degree. In order not to insult any graduates of the university from which he obtained his MS, I will not judge what tier its Economics Graduate School is. But I suspect it is not an Economics powerhouse.
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Bug or feature?
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Also, before the establishment of the Fed, our economy was regularly subjected to a series of bank panics.
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Are you sure you’re not a Republican?
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