>>> Doug Henwood On Nov 13, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Paul Zarembka wrote:
> There was an article in the NYTimes on Sunday describing Ron Paul and > mentioning that he wants to dump the Federal Reserve and return to > the gold > standard. The basis of the justification seems to be along the > lines I > mentioned -- that Central Bank control the economy through the > continual > expansion of debt, made necessary by the Central Bank earning > interest on > money they create and control. > > It seems to me that we on the left ought to have a cogent rebuttal > to Ron > Paul (unless we think he is correct). In many ways, Paul is VERY > conservative (e.g., on women's control of their bodies), but some > of his > statements about Iraq/Iran are great. Interesting. It seems like it's a short step from conspiracism to goldbuggery. Ever read about the 19th century? There were lots of violent booms followed by busts. The busts were often horrendous. The U.S. spent about half of the last three decades of the 19th century in recession or depression. Central banks are supposed to mitigate that sort of thing, and they've mostly done a decent job of it. In the U.S., the Fed was in part an appropriation of the populist proposal for an elastic currency system. Gold is horrendously austere - part of the apparatus of conservatism, as Keynes put it. Hayek understood that, and Paul does too. It seems pretty strange that some PEN-Lers don't. ^^^^^^^ CB: Is the current US system a combination Central Bank/Stock Market one ?
