Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Would the failure of Bitcoin lead you to reconsider your assumptions?
by
BubbleBoy
on 08/06/2011, 13:59:57 UTC
Third and most important, talking about "the gold standard" is terribly vague. The monetary systems that people label under "gold standard" are extremely different and only someone very ignorant about economics would join them together and treat them all the same. There are times where people used gold as money without any government intervention. Then governments usually start the shenerigans by imposing some type of specific gold coin, to later on create a central bank with paper (suposedly) backed by gold. But each monetary system is completely different (even when they all are using gold in some way) and its stupid to treat them all the same.

Specifically for the period of time you are mentioning: When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 it wasnt that bad actually. It could only create dollars if they were backed by so called "real goods" and 40% of gold. Obviously this was only temporary and not 5 years were gone when they started changing the law so the Fed could expand. The first big expansion was for IWW where the Fed doubled prices in the USA in 5 years (if I recall corectly). To pay for the war the government gave the Fed the power to buy government bonds. Housing bubbles appeared all over the USA, specially in Florida. Finally the bubble popped and there was the crisis of 1921-22. This is a crisis keynesians dont like to talk about and ignore it because the government lowered taxes and reduced spending: the crisis was over in a year and a half, even when it started worse than the Great Depression.

Then the Fed finally got definitive powers to expand and it created the roaring 20's with a big stock market bubble that popped in 1929. How is this the fault of gold? And how is this related to other type of monetary systems like the ones I have explained earlier? Its stupid to group all the monetary systems that use gold in some way together because they can be very different.

For the record, during the 20's Fisher congratulated the Fed for its great job at managing the economy and during 1929 said that the collapse would not happen, that it was only a plateau. In 1927 Keynes said that they had now the hability to control the economy and that crisis were a thing of the past. Hayek and Mises said there was a bubble and that a crisis was coming. Mises even rejected a job at a big bank and remained in his professor job (earning a lot less money) because he said the bank would fail and he did not wanted his name associated with all that. His wife was not happy, but the bank end up failing 2 years later. There is unwritten law in economics: When a keynesian says they have now control of the economy and crisis are things of the past, a big crisis is coming.

First of all please let me take a stance regarding fractional reserve banking: accepting deposits, putting a fraction aside and lending out the remainder is the standard way any and all banks operate, regardless if they use gold, green paper or bitcoins. The notion that fractional reserve banking is somewhat only possible if enabled by a central bank is a Zeitgeist conspirationista type of fallacy. One who doesn't understand what fractional reserve banking is, and the way it enables monetary expansion from M1 to M2, like our friend here AV, is nothing but a crackpot armchair economist who does not even warrant a response.

Secondly, the issue in question is not whether a government-imposed gold standard is better than other types of "sound money", but rather if deflation is good or bad for the economy. Regardless if it's 100% or 40% backed by gold, any fixed money supply has the same natural tendency to deflate and choke the economy, by rewarding the hoarders and punishing debtors. The US maintained the 40% gold standard until the winter of 1933-1934, which unsurprisingly coincided with the very bottom of the depression. Comparatively, the keynesian decision to float the Pound in UK lead to a much quicker recovery.

The anecdotal evidence you present regarding the deep foresights of Austrian economists is largely irrelevant. Fisher was in no way a keynesian, not even Keynes was until after the onset of the depression (The General Theory was published in 1936). Indeed the depression was such a catalytic event that it provided deep insights to Keynes, much to the despair of Hayek who painstakingly prepared a compelling rebuttal of Keynes earlier work, only to be scoffed with the famous quip "I no longer believe that". So any quote from the Keynes before cca 1930 should be taken with a pound of salt. The ability to predict the future would have made Misses a very rich man shorting the stock market, I believe in this instance we're simply dealing with selection bias.