Greenspan warns of disaster and the need for Gold to be part of the system!
By Julian D. W. Phillips
Feb 26 2003
...We were troubled by the possibility that he may have changed his views since then, until we heard the statement he made to the Economic Club of New York on 19th December 2002:
"Although the gold standard could hardly be portrayed as having produced a period of price tranquillity, it was the case that the price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But, in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, has allowed a persistent over issuance of money. As recently as a decade ago, central bankers, having witnessed more than a half-century of chronic inflation, appeared to confirm that a fiat currency was inherently subject to excess."...
..."Gold and Economic Freedom" states:
"â¦â¦â¦. 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 bondsâ¦."
"â¦â¦..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. 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."
"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. "....
..We have no doubt, that Greenspan sees the spectre of Japanâs situation creeping ever nearer to the States...
http://www.kitco.com/ind/misc/feb262003.html
It also has some interesting respective later in the commentary, on the 1929 crash and events before/after
Josh