Let it be Known that No Financial Crisis was Ever Caused by Stable Money

There aren’t many blanket statements you can make about economics. Usually, “it depends.” But, there’s one thing I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence:

No economic crisis was ever caused by stable money.

For some reason, the gold standard system has gained a reputation for causing crises. This is mostly from the Keynesian camp: they need floating currencies to play their funny money games. The purpose of funny money is to solve some kind of problem whose fundamental cause is typically not monetary at all. For example, we are now in a process of trying to solve a bank insolvency crisis, an unemployment problem, and a fiscal deficit problem, with a monetary solution.

The purpose of a gold standard system is to produce stable money. Nobody has found a better way to do so. For the most part, it works. So, how does this gold-based stable money cause a crisis? It doesn’t.

Of course, many crises happened during the gold standard era, before floating currencies appeared in 1971. In the two centuries before 1971, people got into financial trouble for all kinds of reasons. Banks lent money to people that couldn’t pay it back. Businesses invested in ideas that turned out to be not so hot. Governments borrowed and spent more than they should have. Destructive domestic tax increases were imposed. Countries got into tariff wars with each other. There were even a few World Wars, Civil Wars, communist revolutions, and so forth.

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George Gilder Thankfully Returns, Bearing Knowledge and Power

by Ralph Benko

George Gilder, whose new book publishes today, is one of the original pillars of Supply Side economics. As stated by Discovery Institute, which he co-founded, “Mr. Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute’s Economic Roundtable, as Program Director for the Manhattan Institute….”

He was the living writer most quoted by President Reagan. And he is back with his most brilliant work yet — one of potentially explosive importance if taken to heart by our political and policy thought leaders. It is a radical guide, with surprising insights on almost every page, to the creation of a new era of vibrant prosperity.


The Lehrman Standard

by Paul Brodsky

As reviewer Paul Brodsky, a professional investor in New York City, perceptively notes,

"Lewis Lehrman is one of a very small group of contemporary gold advocates able to successfully bridge the gap separating practical conservative intellectualism from fleeting, half-baked idealism. His CV lists great success across many fields including education (degrees and teaching fellowships from Yale and Harvard); industry (past president of Rite Aid); politics (narrow loser to Mario Cuomo in the 1982 New York governor’s race); finance, (past Morgan Stanley managing director); private sector entrepreneur (founder, L. E. Lehrman & Company); public sector advocate (founder, Lehrman Institute); historian (author, Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point); and recognized philanthropist (awarded the National Humanities Medal by George W. Bush in an Oval Office ceremony). ... Only someone erudite and elegant in demeanor could hope to pull it off . In an irreconcilably over-leveraged world where irritated bond vigilantes question economic sustainability and angry Tea Partiers protest the immorality of it all, Lehrman’s views are considered and his convictions carry weight. He brings gravitas to his cause, and he does so from within as a member of the club."

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Before the Fed: JP Morgan Summons the Bank Presidents

"Finally, on the night of Sunday, November 2, Morgan summoned the presidents of the major New York banks to his new library, at the corner of Madison Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street, an Italian Renaissance-style palace he had built next door to his house to showcase his collection of rare books, manuscripts, and other artwork. Its marble floors, frescoed ceilings, walls lined with tapestries and triple-tiered bookcases of Circasian walnut, crammed full of rare Bibles and illuminated medieval manuscripts, made it an incongruous setting for a meeting of the banking establishment. Once the moneymen had gathered, Morgan had the great ornamental bronze doors to the library locked and refused to let anyone leave until all had collectively agreed to commit a further $25 million to the rescue fund."

— Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance (Penguin Books, 2009, p. 54)



The Demise of Money and Credit

by Lewis E. Lehrman

Lately we have been engulfed by headlines reporting financial turmoil on every continent, in almost every nation, large and small. The commissars of central planning who so marred the history of the 20th century have been replaced by central banks in the 21st. In Cyprus, the new leadership now dares to confiscate citizens’ wealth with a one-time tax of up to 60 percent on bank deposits above 100,000 euros. Self-interested prime ministers blame continental monetary policies for instigating the currency wars that they themselves surreptitiously carry on.

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The Common Sense of the Common Law

Ralph J. Benko  |  Jun 18, 2013
Constitution.org provides an extensive and thoughtful Memorandum of Law by Larry Becraft, Esq., of Huntsville, Alabama, on Article I, Section 10, clause 1 of the US Constitution. Sir William Blackstone courtesy of Wikipedia One of many interesting matters the Memorandum treats is Blackstone's Commentaries, a book that was a fixture in the...

Fighting the Currency Wars

Kathleen Packard  |  Jun 17, 2013
The value of the yuan has been slowly rising. The value of the Japanese yen has been sharply falling. Abenomics is attempting to reflate the Japanese economic – slowly, slowly. “Japan is back!” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tells the Japanese. Coming back isn’t easy. The Financial Times’ Jonathan Soble has noted...
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Jun 17, 2013
World Press
Daniel Eckert

Policy Should Allow Gold as a Parallel Currency

via Google Translate: Milton Friedman was one of the most outstanding economists of the 20th Century. He came from...
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Jun 29, 1984
Key Monetary Writings
Lewis E. Lehrman

Golden Antidote to High Interest

Only the gold monetary standard can renew faith in the fixed value of all future money payments on borrowings...
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