Golden Stupidity

Gold will come onto your radar, if it hasn't already.  As our fiat currency continues to lose value, the hard money arguments sound increasingly logical.  Let's analyze the fiat currency argument:  "Let's have a central bank (the FED in the US), print pieces of paper, or create zeroes on a screen, and call that money.  We'll then use that as a medium of exchange for things of value."

Here's the hard money argument: "Gold and silver have been used throughout history as money and a medium of exchange, they still have value, and are recognizable to humanity.  Also, you can't print gold or silver, so you put a brake on centralized power and put control into regular people's hands, instead of Big Bank's".

I'm simplifying things, but the hard money argument clearly obliterates the fiat currency argument.  Every single fiat currency has failed.  Every single one.  There are no exceptions.  The people who love printed fiat currency are the ones who benefit - the holders and controllers of Centralized Power.  Gold and silver benefit you, which is why you learned nothing about them in school, and you're propagandized against them currently.  This brings us to this agonizingly stupid article in the Economist - an establishment organ of the Big Bank.  This piece is good to practice using the Trivium, to spot asinine arguments, logical fallacies, and economic crackpottery.  It is apparently the work of a simian brain.

Let's take a short look.  Here are some of the 'arguments' from the upper crust, establishment Economist: "The clips I've found of this discussion on the CNBC website feature commentators appropriately noting that the idea is "ludicrous". But in the sequence I was watching on TV that didn't get picked up by the website, one of the channel's regulars said the attention was misplaced. The gold standard is "never going to happen", he said; it's "incredibly deflationary", the American government is never going to try to return to it, and the whole exploratory committee is just political tomfoolery we should all ignore in order to focus on real issues."

There is no argument present.  Here is what passes for print worthy 'argument' these days in the hallowed halls of The Economist": 'ludicrous', 'never going to happen', 'incredibly deflationary', 'American gov't is never going to return to it' and 'tomfoolery'.  This is why a gold standard is 'bad' and you'd better just not ask any more questions, citizen - you don't want to be accused of peddling tomfoolery.  I can understand that the Establishment House Organs want you to continue to be a wage slave, have your wealth confiscated through the invisible tax known as inflation, and would rather you remain in eternal darkness, but at least they could come up with some semi palatable reasoning or at least sophistry to try to pull the wool over our eyes.

Bafflingly, this article then gets worse.  It tries to besmirch the Austrian school economists, who have been right about everything, and would love to see your economic freedom within a free market.  This defies description.  I'd love to come up with a snarky put down, but I simply cannot: "Austrian-style growth-through-austerity policies are a poor idea that has failed throughout Europe and Britain, but going a step further and bringing back the gold standard is just ridiculous, antediluvian, superstitious nonsense."

I'll work in reverse.  The Gold Standard is 'ridiculous', 'antediluvian' and 'superstitious'.  This is an ad hominem argument.  Calling someone or something bad names is not an argument.  Not only that, the Byzantine Empire lasted 900 years because they adhered to  a strict Gold Standard.  I'm not sure where 'superstitious' came from, but the troglodyte who wrote this probably doesn't either.  Here's the best part.  At no time, in any country, in the history of the modern west, has a government come close to 'Austrian style growth through austerity'.  This attributes a non existent policy, then claims that it has 'failed throughout Europe and Britain'.  This is called a 'straw man fallacy'.  It holds up Austrian economics, then says it has failed.  Austerity?  Where?  The last I checked 'Europe and Britain' have deficits the size of small planets are are spending and printing like mad.  Austrian economics does not permit fiat currency of any kind - the school of economics that this writer has held up as a 'failure'.  Not only that, where were the Austrian School Economists in charge, or having any influence at all?

I thought about titling this piece "Why Blogs Matter", because here you have an accepted, snooty, establishment entity in The Economist, and it is feeding you pure economic trash.  There are countless blogs, personal websites and reports where one can find great insight and solid thought.  The Economist, needless to say, needs you to continue with the status quo of printing money, reckless spending, and sheepledom forever.  IT certainly benefits from that.  You don't.