“Global cooperation, dealing with other countries, getting along with other countries is good, it’s very important. But there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag. This is the United States of America that I’m representing.”
“We used to have a very, very solid country because it was based on a gold standard, but we don’t have the gold. Other places have the gold.”
“Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”
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FORBES – 25FEB17 – Inside President Trump’s otherwise “standard Trump stump speech” at CPAC was nestled what might be a most intriguing observation:
Global cooperation, dealing with other countries, getting along with other countries is good, it’s very important. But there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag. This is the United States of America that I’m representing.
There’s a keen insight in there that could, just maybe, transform our lives, America, and the world. No “global currency?” Was this, with the poetic observation that “there is no such thing as a global anthem…or a global flag,” just a trope? Or could it contain a political portent with potential high impact on world financial markets? Let’s drill down.
As it happens, there is a global currency.
It’s called the “U.S. dollar.”
Most international trade is priced in dollars. The Bretton Woods international monetary system invested the dollar, which then was defined as and (internationally) was legally convertible to gold at $35/oz, with global currency status. France’s then-finance minister, later its president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, called the “reserve currency” status of the dollar — its status, along with gold, as global currency — an “exorbitant privilege.”
By this d’Estaing was alluding to the fact, as summarized at Wikipedia, that “As American economist Barry Eichengreen summarized: ‘It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100 bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one.'” That privilege, which made great sense during the period immediately after World War II, became a curse.
In 1971 President Nixon, under the influence of his Svengali-like Treasury Secretary John Connally, “suspend[ed] temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold.” That closure proved durable instead of temporary. The dollar became, and remains, the world’s global currency.
What had been an “exorbitant privilege” devolved into an exorbitant liability. As my former professional colleague John D. Mueller, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, formerly Rep. Jack Kemp’s chief economist, writing in the Wall Street Journal in Trump’s Real Trade Problem Is Money recently and astutely observed:
a monetary system based on a reserve currency is unsustainable, since foreign official dollar reserves (for example) are acquired and must be repaid in goods. In other words, the increase in official dollar reserves equals the net exports of the rest of the world, which means it must also equal U.S. international payments deficits—an unsustainable situation.
In other words, if President Trump wishes to address America’s merchandise trade deficit (balanced to perfection, of course, by a capital accounts surplus) he will find that allowing the dollar to be used as the global currency is the real snake in the economic woodpile. The dollar’s burden as the international reserve currency, not currency manipulation by our trading partners or bad treaties, is the true villain in the ongoing melodrama of crummy job creation.
Mueller’s Wall Street Journal column enumerates the three options open to President Trump:
First, muddle along under the current “dollar standard,” a position supported by resigned foreigners and some nostalgic Americans—among them Bryan Riley and William Wilson at the Heritage Foundation, and James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute.
Second, turn the International Monetary Fund into a world central bank issuing paper (e.g., special drawing rights) reserves—as proposed in 1943 by Keynes, since the 1960s by Robert A. Mundell, and in 2009 by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China. Drawbacks: This kind of standard is highly political and the allocation of special drawing rights essentially arbitrary, since the IMF produces no goods.
Third, adopt a modernized international gold standard, as proposed in the 1960s by Rueff and in 1984 by his protégé Lewis E. Lehrman …and then-Rep. Jack Kemp.
To “muddle along” would, of course, be entirely antithetical to Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again. It would destroy his crucial commitment to get the economy growing at 3%+ — vastly faster than it has for the past 17 years — which also happens to be the recipe for robust job creation and upward income mobility for workers. It also is the essential ingredient for balancing the federal budget while rebuilding our infrastructure and military.
To turn the IMF into a world central bank would, of course, be anathema to Trump’s economic nationalism. To subordinate the dollar to the IMF’s SDR would be equivalent to lowering Old Glory and replacing the American flag with the flag of the United Nations on every flagpole in America. Unthinkable under a Trump administration.
That leaves the third option, to “adopt a modernized international gold standard, as proposed in the 1960s by Rueff and in 1984 by his protégé Lewis E. Lehrman … and then-Rep. Jack Kemp” (whose eponymous foundation I advise). To this one should add, as Forbes.com contributor Nathan Lewis has shrewdly observed, the removal of tax and regulatory barriers to the use of gold as currency.
As I have repeatedly observed Donald Trump shows a strong affinity for gold. He has also shown a keen intuitive grasp of how the gold standard was crucial to having made America great:
Donald Trump: “We used to have a very, very solid country because it was based on a gold standard,” he told WMUR television in New Hampshire in March last year. But he said it would be tough to bring it back because “we don’t have the gold. Other places have the gold.”
Trump’s comment to GQ: “Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”
Trump has been misled to believe that “we don’t have the gold. Other places have the gold.” In fact, the United States, Germany, and the IMF together have about as much gold as the rest of the world combined and America has well more than Germany and the IMF combined. [Note: This column has been updated to clarify that the United States has well more gold than Germany and the IMF combined but not, as originally stated, more than twice as much.]
We have the gold. Bringing back the gold standard would not be very hard to do.
SOURCE
We need to print our own money, backed by the people’s work nothing else. No burden attached to any money used for domestic spending. Use commodities for trade.
Does anyone,including President Trump know if there’s actually any gold left in Ft.Knox? What was it that left the country on that secret flight out of Atlanta during the power outage? Inquiring minds want to know.
Hmm, a bit difficult now, seeing as how only one ounce of silver in every hundred is real metal, with the other 99 being mere paper, and the game gets even more outrageous when we look at how many ounces of actual gold are traded compared with how many ounces of paper gold are traded.
See “Paper Gold” and Its Effect on the Gold Price”
https://www.caseyresearch.com/paper-gold-and-its-effect-on-the-gold-price/
This report has it that only 1 in every 1,000 ounces of gold is real, whilst other reports are less drastic in their summation, some stating that only one in every 207 ounces of gold traded are actual real gold.
The only real way for Trump to accomplish this would be to adopt the non-usurious barter system by which commodities are traded for commodities on an international scale, hundreds or thousands or millions of tons of one commodity in one nation traded for hundreds or thousands or millions of tons of another commodity in another nation, with no possibility of fake paper fiat money being specially printed to pay for such commodities, as fake paper money specially printed to defraud other nations is then purposely rapidly devalued by massive inflation to rob the seller who has provided solid commodities for paper fake money. We can see how prime real estate doubles or even triples in price in certain areas in just 2 years for example.
This barter system was adopted in Germany prior to WWII, it was called National Socialism, it was the only true workable economic model. Labour, skills and commodities were traded for similar without usury, with total honesty and fairness. Tokens of money were still used in Germany, and today, these can be copper, nickel, silver or gold coins, or any other commodities with tradeable value.
Re. #1 by stevegmorminogmailcom: “We need to print our own money, backed by the people’s work nothing else. No burden attached to any money used for domestic spending. Use commodities for trade.”
Exactly. The authors of this article and those referenced present “the three options open to President Trump” under the implied assumption that these are the only choices available. Well these are three choices palatable to the readers and writers of Bloomburg and Forbes – the current path towards indebtedness to the international banks, bankruptcy, and pillaging as is being done with Greece; special drawing rights which is the system the big banks are trying to maneuver the world towards, and a gold standard which would just be another way to constrain the US government from robust unilateral action to bootstrap its own economy.
But Adolf Hitler understood what had been done to Germany after the first world war, and had the insight to come up with a different solution – a labor-backed currency just as you describe, and within a few years resurrected Germany into a thriving economic powerhouse. Increasingly I believe that Trump is an actual true nationalist and further may have the wisdom and cunning to accurately perceive the things that are wrong and plot a course towards fixing them, despite fierce and organized opposition, and without getting killed or drawn into some horrible war. Methinks the next few years may be interesting times…
“We used to have a very, very solid country because it was based on a gold standard” – Donald Trump
It was the gold argument that got Yanklandia into debt servitude to the Rotshites and their admirers a century ago. When the financial parable, the Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, the public debate raged between the so called ‘Goldbugs’ who argued, like Trump, that ‘currency’ needed to be backed by gold to have any value, and the ‘Populists’ who wanted a return to the greenback dollar, issued under Lincoln, and backed by nothing more than the ‘full faith and credit of the US government’.
Obviously, Trump never listened to the famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech by Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, immortalized as the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV2wRCcWJa8
The Goldbugs won the argument in Christmas 1913 when they managed to corrupt Woody Woodpecker Wilson to sign over the keys to the vault with the infamous Federal Reservation Akt of 1913, by which means the Rotshites could finance the ‘war to end all wars’ of 1914-18. Of course, with the engineered crash of ’29 and the ‘Great Depression’ they were able to remove gold from the equation altogether. They even managed to persuade the ‘goy’ hand over all their gold trinkets in exchange for pieces of paper known as ‘Federal Reservation Notes’, devaluing with every passing second.
Fact of the matter is that ‘currency’ is only ever backed by the full faith and credit of the pipple in any case. How do we know this? Just look at the so-called ‘GFC’ of 2008. Who came to the rescue of the ‘too-big-to-fails’? You guessed it … the good ol’ ‘Mercan taxpayer. Via the so-called ‘bail outs’.
Bottom line … the license to print the coin of the realm should NEVER be entrusted to a private cabal of self-interested psychopaths. EVER! Least of all … a pack of Jews. Everything follows as a direct consequence … the endless rolling wars, the gargantuan ‘debt’, the war on the nation state, the war on white Europeans, and on and on and on…
Status seekers, I never cared
Once I found out they never dared
To seize the world and shake it upside down
And every stinking bum should wear a crown
Saying I cry for love
Until all the plates are broken
Cry for love
Until my eyes are soaking
Yeah cry for love
On every salmon morning
Cry for love
Because imitation’s boring
Cry for love
was at knox few years ago
no gold.
soldiers and fences guarding jew lies
library of congress flooded like a toilet
This country owns (citizens as a collective) zero gold. The federal reserve shareholders own the United States corporation’s gold. The, so-called, citizens are the collateral to the $21 trillion and counting. Sorry to wake you. Ban usury, shutter the federal reserve, and bring the shareholders of the federal reserve to trial for theft, fraud and treason. Oops, did I say that out-loud?