> In the coming months and years, countries will have to return to a gold standard and when they do, they will have to either limit gold sales, deeply penalize it, or just like in 1934, confiscate it.
All of those things happened as the gold standard was breaking down to and countries were trying to escape its constraints, as part of the process of getting to fiat and the control of money supply it allows.
> This has all happened before.
No, a return to the gold standard after its general global rejection has not happened before.
European nations dropped the gold standard during WW1 and then mostly returned to the gold standard afterward[2]:
"During World War I, most major countries abandoned the gold
standard in order to use fiat currency to fund the war effort. As a result, those nations experienced high rates of inflation. The desire to bring inflation under control and restore monetary stability led most countries to plan on returning to the gold standard at some point
after the war. Unfortunately, many of the international monetary difficulties of the late 1920s can be traced to decisions regarding the resumption of the gold standard in the mid-1920s. "
There is an interesting history here[1]:
"Britain had left the gold standard in 1914 and responded by increasing the supply of money to stimulate the economy. Production was limited due to substantial decreases in working hours agreed at the end of the war. In 1919 increased consumer demand caused inflation and a price boom.
By early 1920 the Government was more concerned with a desire to return to the gold standard and with the high rates of inflation than with unemployment. In December 1919 the Cunliffe Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchange Rates recommended an early return to the gold standard. The overall objective was to restore pre-war British predominance in international trade, which depended on stabilising the value of sterling around the pre-war dollar exchange rate. This required equilibrium in the balance of payments and the reduction of the money in circulation..."
> a return to the gold standard after its general global rejection has not happened before
But only because a general global rejection didn't happen before. Remember that the "general global rejection" only started with the Nixon Shock in the US in 1971.
>Remember that the "general global rejection" only started with the Nixon Shock in the US in 1971
Nope - most countries already rejected it. The mismatch allowed them to extract gold at under market prices from the US, since we tried to claim we were on it, and when it became clear that the US was being taken advantage of, we dropped the pretense.
The US has not held enough gold to back it's money for well over 100 years. Holding the pretense till 1971 was to lessen gold bugs from freaking out.
No, it isn't. Individual countries or small groups temporarily suspending the gold standard for a particular emergency and returning to it thereafter has happened (particularly in the final century of the general dominance of the standard).
Are we just supposed to leave out that many empires simply collapsed, like the Roman Empire? So that it didn't go back to a gold standard because it no longer existed?
I mean, maybe you have a point. Few that become heavy meth users ever go back to being healthy.
"Since those dim beginnings in the forests of the Stone Age, governments have been perpetually rediscovering
first the splendors and later the woes of inflation. Each new government discoverer of the splendors seems to
believe that no one has ever beheld such splendors before. Each new discoverer of the woes professes not to
understand any connection with the earlier splendors. In the thousands of years of inflation's history, there has
been nothing really new about inflation, and there still is not." -- Jens O. Parson
> Are we just supposed to leave out that many empires simply collapsed, like the Roman Empire?
Its, again, not the same thing you predict, so...does it matter? (Rome didn't have a simple gold standard and despite coin debasement never abandoned metallic commodity base of its currency in principle.)
> Few that become heavy meth users ever go back to being healthy.
And few that have fully adopted useful new technology (social or otherwise) simply abandon it for the less useful thing they had before. Argument by analogy often involves begging the question.
You keep arguing my words and not my point and I’m not sure what you think that type of sophistry is going to win you.
You are well aware that the Denarius went from pure silver to .02%. You know it’s a classic example of inflation bringing an empire to its knees. Why split hairs to point out that there was still a sliver of silver?
My point is that history is filled with stories of inflation and its disastrous consequences. This time will not be different. You can win the words but I’m not sure you’re going to win that point.
> You know it’s a classic example of inflation bringing an empire to its knees
I mean, its not, though its frequently cited as such by those obsessed with pure commodity money; at that level of reductionism it would be more accurate to say you are reversing cause and effect, as the Empire tried to cope with decline by debasing currency.
> My point is that history is filled with stories of inflation and its disastrous consequences.
History is filled with stories of inflation with and without disasters, and full of disasters during which inflation was turned to as an (sometimes successful, sometimes not) route of escape. Reading it as full of stories of inflation’s “disastrous consequences” takes both reversing cause and effect and highly selective reading.
> the Empire tried to cope with decline by debasing currency
That sounds like, "The spouse tried to cope with the failed marriage by cheating." Maybe, but maybe also it played a role in the marriage failing. Can you truly separate the two things?
Listen, you could be right. I would definitely say that I've never been one to be "obsessed with pure commodity money." But I've also steadily lowered my respect for the entire branch of Economics over time. What's that H.L. Mencken quote? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it." When you watch the film The Big Short, it seems to talk down to the audience but it's also talking down to the entire finance industry and population at large. It all seems so patently obvious in hindsight -- but it was obvious in foresight too, if anyone wanted to look. (Note: We're facing the same thing now, in greater degrees, but with different names (CDO's? Horrible! BTO's? Sure!) and we're about to be humiliated once again.)
I'll repeat what I said initially. I used to be Keynesian. I used to think that inflation allowed for growth. It encouraged investment. I saw the opposition as a fringe group: gold bugs and conspiracy theorists, frankly.
But what I came to realize is that, long-term, it can't work. It's not a Nash equilibrium (see: https://blankpoole.com). It doesn't encourage investment; it demands it. And that, to repeat myself, removes the coupling to value. Your local coffee shop is only worth so much, based on its revenues. Period. If you go above that, you're speculating -- fine; but you continue past that and you're in "growth investing" land, where you quite literally know that the coffee shop isn't worth that but you expect someone to be the greater fool.
People right now, unironically, say that the market always goes up. I'm not joking. You've probably heard it yourself. Economists could fight it but they enable it instead. "Just put your money in the market and wait. There is always a greater fool." Shame on them.
As that article I linked to points out, while the coffee shop shares can only be worth so much, any scare resource widely viewed as a currency, such as precious metals, have no such restriction. It's a Nash equilibrium. If field of Economics was minutely honest, if it had a mote of respectability, it would recognize that and stand firm despite what its income depends on.
All of those things happened as the gold standard was breaking down to and countries were trying to escape its constraints, as part of the process of getting to fiat and the control of money supply it allows.
> This has all happened before.
No, a return to the gold standard after its general global rejection has not happened before.