Who can one turn to to muster argument against the prestigious NY Times and it's take on the rising price-inflation conundrum? All I can do is turn solicitously to my shrink, the tendentious, irascible and former aluminum-siding giant Doc Kronkite, who, in his classic tome "The Truss: Friend or Foe?" (Meshuggeh Press, 1974) wrote in Chapter 27:
We gotta hand it to the boys in Treasury to make world monetary reform (at one time drier that Euell Gibbons munching happily on a hickory root)one of the most exciting shows in town. The stumbling, bumbling ten-year scam aimed at US citizens, foreign dollar-holders (a diminishing breed) and disgruntled Arabs as "Responsible Monetary Policy" seems headed for a showdown as the rest of the free-world is readying to have it out once and for all over the horrendous but still-playable-in-Peoria method of running an economic system by printing globs and globs of funny-money to pay the bills...a very popular but increasingly tough sell and if you don't believe me ask Ed King, Ed Koch and a few dozen other province chiefs.
Anyway, it seems that the French, sharper even than the Swiss and certainly more vocal, are asking rather politely as they have been for the past decade, for the boys in Treasury to please limit their printing-press prestidigitations by simply linking the dollar deluge to something like gold, that well known "barbarous metal," which so far the boys in Treasury have been unable to counterfeit. "No, no, no" say the boys in Treasury, "gold and hard currencies are not good. What we need is more paper money, more SDR's (paper that backs still more paper) and if all or part of that paper mountain turns out to be no good; if it loses value and becomes increasingly unacceptable as payment for promises made and debts incurred (much of it already is) don't worry: we'll just print more of it."
Reminded the doc of an old Abbott & Costello "Who's on First" routine:
ABBOTT: Listen, the government's in a real pickle and if you want to be patriotic you'll take that money you have in the bank and spend it.
COSTELLO: I don't wanna spend it.
ABBOTT: What do you mean you don't want to spend it?
COSTELLO: Look, one year they tell me to spend it so I spend it. Then prices go through the roof and they tell me I'm spending too much. Save it they say. So I save it and then they blame me for causing a recession. Now I should hurry up and spend it to get them out of the recession? Let them spend it. Hey, I wasn't born yesterday.
ABBOTT: They are spending it. Don't you know that your government is so concerned about you that not only did they spend all that they had...they went out and spent 80 billion that they didn't have. Whatdya think about that?
COSTELLO: Now wait just one minute. How could they spend 80 billion if they didn't have it?
ABBOTT: They got it.
COSTELLO: How'd they get it?
ABBOTT: What do you care how they got it? They got it didn't they?
COSTELLO: They didn't get it from me. They didn't get it from you. Where'd they get it?
ABBOTT: They got it, that's all.
COSTELLO: They STOLE it!
ABBOTT: What's the matter with you, you think your government would steal it? Say you're sorry.
COSTELLO: I'm sorry.
ABBOTT: That's better.
COSTELLO: (pause) So where'd they get it?
ABBOTT: They printed it.
COSTELLO: Oh. I was worried there for a minute.
(Lee)
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