Gold and Conspiracies

[syrakusos]

To meet the immense volume of demand obligations,

which are, by their terms, payable in gold, there exists

in actual gold under a modern banking system an amount

equal to but a small fraction of the total amount of gold

debts. This system is therefore safe only if the credit

of the banks is so strong as to inspire a confident reliance

that even if actual gold in large quantity is at one and the

same time demanded from one or from several banks, the

metal will not be needlessly and wastefully hoarded, the

public and the banks themselves being confident that

money so withdrawn will be redeposited, so long as there

remain some institutions the credit of which cannot be

shaken.

"Central Bank of the United States" by P. M. Warburg

American Economic Association Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 10, No. 1, Papers and

Discussions of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting. Atlantic City, N.J., December 28-31, 1908

(Apr., 1909), pp. 338-358

Published by: American Economic Association

(I'll go ya one better, if ya got the nerve: I'll race ya all the way to ....)

The National Government, by the enactment of laws establishing

the national banking system, and by the adoption of Government

control of its machinery, has undertaken to safeguard the

interests of the Government and of the people in this most important

agency for our national development. I think there are very

few people who now deny that the National Government has the

power to establish a system of this kind and to provide suitable

machinery for its operation.

"ADDRESS BY HON. NELSON W. ALDRICH,

United States Senator from Rhode Island and Chairman National Monetary Commission."

From "The Need for Currency Reform" by L. S. Rowe, Nelson W. Aldrich, Theodore E. Burton, A. Piatt Andrew, George E. Roberts

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 37, Supplement (Jan., 1911), pp. 1-32

[Christopher]

I have no issue with floating currency at present. There are very logical and useful reasons for a floating currency. The major issue is really controlling corruption. I further believe that, given the organization of government as a representation of the people living under it, the government can successfully function as the source of credibility and confidence in the currency. Again, the problem is corruption and not the actual theory itself.

As a result, the above snippets don't bother me much. Of course, we always need transparency to avoid corruption. For this reason, Bernanke's position against Ron Paul's proposition absolutely reeks of tainted intentions.

[jeffrey smith]

I'm in the midst of reading Niall Ferguson's Ascent of Money. So far, very good read, and looks like a book worth reading if you haven't read it yet. He goes into a great deal of historical detail about the whys and wherefores of the system we operate under now.