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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Vet who wrote (20789)	4/26/2004 2:38:08 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 80934

Mr Vet > I am surprised to see you bringing up that hoary old excuse that the gold standard caused the great depression. First your statement is nonsense. From a biography of J.C. Smuts. ourcivilisation.com >>>England had come off gold. Other countries had changed their financial policies and done the same. Havenga, Hertzog's Minister of Finance, kept South Africa on gold, The results were disastrous. South Africa could sell nothing abroad. Her exports dropped by twelve million pounds and began to stop altogether. There was no ready cash in the country and no credit or confidence, and many bankruptcies. The mines were badly hit, and Johannesburg was almost ruined. The depression had become so acute that the dullest clerk in a counting-house could see that the country was going bankrupt,....... But Tielman Roos had frightened Hertzog, and he made Havenga, still grumbling in disagreement, come off gold. At once there came prosperity, tremendous, unprecedented, prosperity. Tielman Roos was wanted no more. He was of no more value. The crowds, now busy making money, forgot him.<<< I know nothing more than the people who lived at the time. In fact, I learned from them.

To: The Vet who wrote (20789)	4/26/2004 2:54:22 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80934

> You then build on that false premise by suggesting that a gold standard requires the monetary unit to be fixed to a certain quantity of gold I don't recall saying that. I said, "They want the value of the currency to be fixed against an external measure eg gold." No fixed amount was mentioned only that a measure, external to the money itself, should be used. > The standard would work much better and would still work today if each national currency was convertible to gold and if that convertibility was flexible. Maybe it would work, to measure with a piece of elastic, but then what would be the point of it? Simply to see what the true rate of inflation was? That's the last thing they want. And, in fact, they don't need it. They can print all they want, and more, and there will never be inflation simply because there's no way to measure it accurately. Further, and as you well know, they just have to keep a damper on the gold price and and that's another way to show there's no inflation. And then they create a bit of deflation --- foreign manufacture, local unemployment --- and that also keeps prices down.

To: The Vet who wrote (20789)	4/26/2004 2:59:18 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80934

> the inequality created by the present system, where one country is allowed to produce unlimited and obscene quantities of the "world standard" currency at absolutely no cost or penalty, would be eliminated. That's what the powers-that-be (Britain, US) wanted. That's what they arranged at Bretton Woods. If you want to change it you will have to change the whole system. PS. I'm sorry I have to respond piecemeal but, for some reason, my posts have been limited to about 250 words.