Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
and how did they manage to achieve this under the gold standard?
What are you talking about? The fed was instituted in 1913.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Hedron
What are you talking about? The fed was instituted in 1913.
that link you provided says exactly what ive been saying; that the great depression was prolonged and made more serious by adherence to the gold standard, and those countries that changed from gold to fiat money avoided the worst.
Hedron
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
that link you provided says exactly what ive been saying; that the great depression was prolonged and made more serious by adherence to the gold standard, and those countries that changed from gold to fiat money avoided the worst.
Where? Give me a quote. It seems to me he's saying that the fed caused it to bankroll the US Gov't to get rid of the gold standard.
How can using gold as a means of trade cause inflation? That doesn't even make any sense. It's a commodity. Unless you're going to argue that somehow gold suddenly became worthless when the crash hit.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Hedron
Where? Give me a quote.
quote:
Friedman and Schwartz's insight was that, if monetary contraction was in fact the source of economic depression, then countries tightly constrained by the gold standard to follow the United States into deflation should have suffered relatively more severe economic downturns. Although not conducting a formal statistical analysis, Friedman and Schwartz gave a number of salient examples to show that the more tightly constrained a country was by the gold standard (and, by default, the more closely bound to follow U.S. monetary policies), the more severe were both its monetary contraction and its declines in prices and output.
quote:
Subsequent research (for example, Choudhri and Kochin, 1980) has identified other countries that, like China, did not adhere to the gold standard and hence escaped the worst of the Depression. Two examples are Spain, where the internal instability that ultimately led to the Spanish Civil War prevented the country from re-adopting the gold standard in the 1920s, and Japan, which was forced from the gold standard after being on it for only a matter of months. The Depression in Spain was quite mild, and Japan experienced a powerful recovery almost immediately after abandoning its short-lived experiment with gold.
quote:
The second category consisted of countries that had restored the gold standard in the 1920s but abandoned it early in the Depression, typically in the fall of 1931. As Friedman and Schwartz observed (p. 362), the first major country to leave the gold standard was Great Britain, which was forced off gold in September 1931. Several trading partners, among them the Scandinavian countries, followed Britain's lead almost immediately. The effect of leaving gold was to free domestic monetary policy and to stop the monetary contraction. What was the consequence of this relaxed pressure on the money stock? Friedman and Schwartz noted (p. 362) that "[t]he trough of the depression in Britain and the other countries that accompanied Britain in leaving gold was reached in the third quarter of 1932. [In contrast, i]n the countries that remained on the gold standard or, like Canada, that went only part way with Britain, the Depression dragged on."
quote:
Third were countries that remained on gold but had ample reserves or were attracting gold inflows. The key example was France (see p. 362), the leader of the Gold Bloc. After its stabilization in 1928, France attracted gold reserves well out of proportion to the size of its economy. France's gold inflows allowed it to maintain its money supply and avoid a serious downturn until 1932. However, at that point, France's liquidation of non-gold foreign exchange reserves and its banking problems began to offset the continuing gold inflows, reducing the French money stock. A serious deflation and declines in output began in France, which, as Friedman and Schwartz pointed out, did not reach its trough until April 1935, much later than Great Britain and other countries that left gold early.
quote:
They found that the countries that remained on gold suffered much more severe contractions in output and prices than the countries leaving gold. In a highly influential paper, Eichengreen and Sachs (1985) examined a number of key macro variables for ten major countries over 1929-35, finding that countries that left gold earlier also recovered earlier. Bernanke and James (1991) confirmed the findings of Eichengreen and Sachs for a broader sample of twenty-four (mostly industrialized) countries (see also Bernanke and Carey, 1996), and Campa (1990) did the same for a sample of Latin American countries. Bernanke (1995) showed that not only did adherence to the gold standard predict deeper and more extended depression, as had been noted by earlier authors, but also that the behavior of various key macro variables, such as real wages and real interest rates, differed across gold-standard and non-gold-standard countries in just the way one would expect if the driving shocks were monetary in nature. The most detailed narrative discussion of how the gold standard propagated the Depression around the world is, of course, the influential book by Eichengreen (1992). Eichengreen (2002) reviews the conclusions of his book and concludes largely that they are quite compatible with the Friedman and Schwartz approach.
quote:
Originally posted by Hedron
It seems to me he's saying that the fed caused it to bankroll the US Gov't to get rid of the gold standard.
no, he's saying nothing of the sort. asides from his little quip right at the end of his speech, do you have anything else?
nowhere in the entire article does it say "the federal reserve caused the depression by printing too much money".
what he was really saying was this:
quote:
the Federal Reserve no longer had an effective leader or even a well-established chain of command. Members of the Board in Washington, jealous of the traditional powers of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, strove for greater influence; and Strong's successor, George Harrison, did not have the experience or personality to stop them. Regional banks also began to assert themselves more. Thus, power became diffused; worse, what power there was accrued to men who did not understand central banking from a national and international point of view, as Strong had. The leadership vacuum and the generally low level of central banking expertise in the Federal Reserve System was a major problem that led to excessive passivity and many poor decisions by the Fed in the years after Strong's death.
---
We don't know what would have happened had Strong lived; but what we do know is that the central bank of the world's economically most important nation in 1929 was essentially leaderless and lacking in expertise. This situation led to decisions, or nondecisions, which might well not have occurred under either better leadership or a more centralized institutional structure. And associated with these decisions, we observe a massive collapse of money, prices, and output.
quote:
Originally posted by Hedron
How can using gold as a means of trade cause inflation?
the depression wasn't caused by inflation. it was caused by contraction.
quote:
Originally posted by Hedron
That doesn't even make any sense. It's a commodity. Unless you're going to argue that somehow gold suddenly became worthless when the crash hit.
did you read a word from that link you posted? :conf:
Trancer-X
quote:
Originally posted by atbell
"Just as wars have been the only form of large-scale loan expenditure which statesmen have thought justifiable, so gold-mining is the only pretext for digging holes in the ground which has recommended itself to bankers as sound finance;" -J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
What's gold worth?
It has very few uses that aren't ornamental.
With or without gold backing money is the same thing, it only has worth because people have faith that it will retain worth. If the faith disapears so does the value of the currency, be it cigaretts in a POW camp, tulips in 16th Century Holland, gold in Rome, or paper money in the US.
Quite the contrary. Gold has been and continues to be used in electronics, aerospace, dentistry, etc.
Apparently, it's also now being used in nanotechnology.
BTW - did you know that John Maynard Keynes was a Fabian Socialist?
quote:
Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonald and Emmeline Pankhurst. Even Bertrand Russell later became a member. The two members John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White were delegates at 1944's United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods Conference.
At the core of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Together, they wrote numerous studies of industrial Britain, including alternative co-operative economics that applied to ownership of capital as well as land.
The group, which favoured gradual incremental change rather than revolutionary change, was named — at the suggestion of Frank Podmore — in honour of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (nicknamed "Cunctator", meaning "the Delayer"). His Fabian strategy advocated tactics of harassment and attrition rather than head-on battles against the Carthaginian army under the renowned general Hannibal Barca.
Originally posted by Capitalizt
zomg, I love this guy.
So many good points, and I admire him for fighting the good fight...but Paul is being naive if he really thinks we can turn things around at this point. It's just not going to happen. Government has become so massive and so relentless in it's growth that it simply can't stop down the path it's on. Sadly, a huge chunk of our economy is now dependent on government spending. Millions of people NEED this taxation/regulation/inflation to continue...They have become reliant on the federal parasite for their livelihood..
It's really a complete mess...and no matter how sound the arguments may be for reducing government power, it's not going to happen. The cycle needs to play itself out, and the monster needs to keep growing until it collapses under it's own weight like the USSR.
Do what you can to protect yourself and your family, then sit back and enjoy the show.
It will happen, one way or another. Given enough time, it will happen. We're in acceleration now.
DJ Shibby
quote:
Originally posted by Trancer-X
Quite the contrary. Gold has been and continues to be used in electronics, aerospace, dentistry, etc.
Apparently, it's also now being used in nanotechnology.
BTW - did you know that John Maynard Keynes was a Fabian Socialist?
It's possible a synthesis route for gold has been around for a very long time, which may even have helped spark some of the movements in economy that occurred in the past. *shrug* Fun speculation.
Maybe the USA needs to build more peons to mine the goods. ZUG ZUG!
Trancer-X
quote:
Originally posted by DJ Shibby
It's possible a synthesis route for gold has been around for a very long time, which may even have helped spark some of the movements in economy that occurred in the past. *shrug* Fun speculation.
Maybe the USA needs to build more peons to mine the goods. ZUG ZUG!
What do you mean, something like the Monatomic Gold that the Egyptian Pharoah's used to eat in their sho-bread, or something completely different?
Trancer-X
quote:
Originally posted by robstar
This is one of the reasons why you wanna stay on the gold standard.
Greenspan was apparently once a strong advocate of the Gold Standard.
Until he was appointed to the lofty position of Fed Chairman.
quote:
Gold and Economic Freedom
by Alan Greenspan
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense — perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.
Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.
The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.
What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term "luxury good" implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.
In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.
Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society's divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.
A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.
When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth. When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one — so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the "easy money" country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline — argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.
When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.
With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain's abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed "a mixed gold standard"; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form — from a growing number of welfare-state advocates — was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Capitalizt
Now that Greenspan is out of power, he doesn't seem so averse to the idea of the gold standard...
Trancer-X
September 22, 2008
A New Alliance - By Dr. Ron Paul
The press conference at the National Press Club had a precise purpose. It was to expose, to as many people as possible, the gross deception of our presidential election process. It is controlled by the powerful elite to make sure that neither candidate of the two major parties will challenge the status quo. There is no real choice between the two major parties and their nominees, only the rhetoric varies. The amazingly long campaign is designed to make sure the real issues are ignored. The quotes I used at the press conference from insider Carroll Quigley and the League of Women voters strongly support this contention.
Calling together candidates from the liberal, conservative, libertarian and progressive constituencies, who are all opposed to this rigged process, was designed to alert the American people to the uselessness of continuing to support a process that a claims that one’s only choice is to choose the lesser of two evils and reject a principle vote that might challenge the status quo as a wasted vote.
In both political education and organization, coalitions are worthwhile and necessary to have an impact. “Talking to the choir” alone achieves little. I have always approached political and economic education with a “missionary” zeal by inviting any group in on issues we agree upon.
This opens the door to legitimate discourse with the hope of winning new converts to the cause of liberty. This strategy led to the press conference with the four candidates agreeing to the four principles we believe are crucial in challenging the political system that has evolved over many years in this country.
This unique press conference, despite the surprising, late complication from the Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate, hopefully will prove to be historically significant.
This does not mean that I expect to get Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney to become libertarians, nor do they expect me to change my mind on the issues on which we disagree. In the meantime, why can’t we be friends, respectful of each other, and fight the corrupt process from which we suffer, and at the same time champion the four issues that we all agree upon which the two major candidates won’t address?
Many practical benefits can come from this unique alliance. Our cause is liberty —freedom is popular and is the banner that brings people together. Since authoritarianism divides, we always have the edge in an intellectual fight. Once it’s realized that the humanitarian goals of peace and prosperity are best achieved with our views, I’m convinced we win by working with others. Those who don’t want to collaborate are insecure with their own beliefs.
In the past two years at the many rallies where I talked and shook hands with literally thousands of people, I frequently asked them what brought them to our campaign. There were many answers: the Constitution, my consistency, views on the Federal Reserve, the war, and civil liberties. The crowds were overwhelmingly made up of young people.
Oftentimes I welcomed the diverse groups that came, mentioning that the crowd was made up of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Liberals and Progressives with each group applauding. Even jokingly, I recognized the “anarchists” and that, too, was met with some applause. In conversations, many admitted to having been Democrats and members of the Green Party and supporters of Ralph Nader, yet they came to agree with us on all the issues once the entire philosophy was understood. That’s progress.
Principled people are not shy in participating with others and will defend their beliefs on their merits. Liberals and progressives are willing to align themselves with us on the key issues of peace, civil liberties, debt and the Federal Reserve. That’s exciting and very encouraging, and it means we are making progress. The big challenge, however, is taking on the establishment, and the process that is so well entrenched. But we can’t beat the entrenched elite without the alliance of all those who have been disenfranchised.
Ironically the most difficult group to recruit has been the evangelicals who supported McCain and his pro-war positions. They have been convinced that they are obligated to initiate preventive war in the Middle East for theological reasons. Fortunately, this is a minority of the Christian community, but our doors remain open to all despite this type of challenge. The point is, new devotees to the freedom philosophy are more likely to come from the left than from those conservatives who have been convinced that God has instructed us to militarize the Middle East.
Although we were on the receiving end of ridicule in the reporting of the press conference, I personally was quite satisfied with the results. True revolutions are not won in a week, a month, or even a year. They take time. But we are making progress, and the momentum remains and is picking up. The Campaign for Liberty is alive and well, and its growth and influence will continue. Obviously the press conference could have been even more successful without the last-minute change of heart by the Libertarian Party candidate by not participating. He stated that his support for the four points remains firm. His real reason for not coming, nor letting me know until forty minutes before the press conference started, is unknown to me. To say the least, I was shocked and disappointed.
Yet in the long run, this last-minute change in plans will prove to be of little importance. I’m convinced that problems like this always seem bigger at the moment, yet things usually work out in the end. Recovering from the mistakes and shortcomings of all that we do in this effort is not difficult if the message is right and our efforts are determined. And I’m convinced they are. That’s what will determine our long-term success, not the shortcomings of any one person.
The Libertarian Party Candidate admonished me for “remaining neutral” in the presidential race and not stating whom I will vote for in November. It’s true; I have done exactly that due to my respect and friendship and support from both the Constitution and Libertarian Party members. I remain a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and I’m a ten-term Republican Congressman. It is not against the law to participate in more then one political party. Chuck Baldwin has been a friend and was an active supporter in the presidential campaign.
I continue to wish the Libertarian and Constitution Parties well. The more votes they get, the better. I have attended Libertarian Party conventions frequently over the years.
In some states, one can be on the ballots of two parties, as they can in New York. This is good and attacks the monopoly control of politics by Republicans and Democrats. We need more states to permit this option. This will be a good project for the Campaign for Liberty, along with the alliance we are building to change the process.
I’ve thought about the unsolicited advice from the Libertarian Party candidate, and he has convinced me to reject my neutral stance in the November election. I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
Hmmm, I wonder what else Professor Quigley had to say in his book? lol
Maybe Ron Paul left something out of his speech that he wanted us to find. ;)
quote:
There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.
