moo is right all we need to be back on the gold standard or some sort of commodity based standard. Good ole JP Morgan was all for it and said it was a terrible mistake when we went off it. Eric
Who are these guys? If I'm not mistaken we've had the best and the brightest working in Washington. These are the same fools saying we should evacuate Iraq eventhough they've never held a gun. Gold standard? I guess maybe you were kidding. It doesn't make sense to second guess people who have spent years studying in their respective fields. If the gold standard made sense we would have never switched. There would be implications that prove more costly than simply targeting an interest rate, which lets remind you in actually determined in freee moving markets. Communist.
The market rulez ! Ok i understand where was the "gate"... so you become professor, write a book for your student. Not a bad book, just a like the other on the subject. Then you say to your student to buy the book. Because the test are based from the book, you are sure they will buy ! ... sound bad... and then you make upgrade to your book... and they to the new student that the old one are ok, but not perfet... so no second hand market ! And with no stress
I think that we simply have different views on government. You seem to trust them because they have educations and are elected (which no FED president is elected by the public nor Treasury Secretary) These two paragrpaghs pretty much sum up my views. The idea behind a gold standard is to remove from the hands of politicians or their political appointees the discretion of determining a nation's supply of money. The opposite of a gold standard would be a fiat paper standard, whereby the monetary authorities of government have complete discretion: They can inflate or contract the money supply at will. Historically, because such situations grant enormous power to government without restricting the potential for abuse, vastly destructive abuses have, in fact, occurred. History is littered with many examples of governments printing their paper moneyâto pay for everything from elections to foreign military adventures to welfare programsâuntil it becomes utterly worthless, destroying people's savings and confidence in the economy. Anyone with the power can inflate and basically destroy earnings and savings of millions of people just to suit their will. Don't think it can't happen because it has happened in the past and it will happen in the future. In the 1920's Germany inflated their currency (for many reasons) that lead to insane inflation rates.
Even at that, elections in the US are shams. Sure, we can "throw out the bums and get new bums", but the politics remain the same... more Gummint, more spending, more debt, more inflation, more currency debasement... yada, yada, yada. It's still "Gummint at the expense of the people" no matter how you slice it. A classic South Park episode theme is that "Elections always boil down to the choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich... they're they only ones who suck up enough to get elected..." Amen to that.
Switch your major to metorology. Like Economists, weathermen haven't a clue about forecasting future events, but as a weatherman nobody will ever expect you to be right. The pay will be comparable as well. All said tongue in cheek my friend. Good luck with your career.