Can I Has Gold Standard Nao Prx?

Central banking is bullshit. The stability provided by a gold or silver backed currency increases growth in the long term more than artificial booms and busts caused by central banks lowering interest rates.

Let's look at the current bank and mortgage situation in the US.

1. Fed lowers Federal Funds Rate to increase money supply and spurn economic growth.
2. Banks find themselves with a surplus of reserves by 1.
3. Average investors are tired of the 21st century's weak stock market and decide to get into real estate.
4. Banks, with a surplus of reserves, make loans to anyone with a pulse.
5. Speculators, trying to get in while it's good, take high risk loans because interest rates are low.
6. 3-5 combine to form a housing boom.
7. 6 causes an artificial inflation in real estate prices.
8. Due to 7 and a new (artificial) sense of wealth, people take out mortgages on their homes.
9. Inflation, caused by 1, manifests as the new money makes its way through the economy.
10. The economy contracts just as suddenly as it had expanded.
11. Those who took the most risk during the expansion now take the hardest fall as the malinvestment in the housing market and mortgages is liquidated.

This is where we are now. Unfortunately, amidst the second largest bank failure in US history, the charlatans in the US government are the ones with the least understanding of why. So I ask again, can I has gold standard nao prx?

>>27
I'm generally against regulation and heavy taxation against the little people (i.e. family farmers, small businesses, etc.), but repealing the Glass–Steagall Act that was enacted during the Great Depression I've found to be a huge mistake (not a mistake to those who were involved in repealing it of course). It used to be when the act was put in place that investment banks and lending banks were separate entities. A banking institution could either claim to be an investment bank or a lending bank, but not both. The act prohibited the banks from becoming the huge gambling casinos that they've now become.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was done by financial advisors in the Clinton administration, Robert Ruben, Larry Summers, etc.^[1] Basically the wolves that caused the mess in the first place are now tending the hen house. Larry Summers in particular is now Obama's director of the White House National Economic Council.^[2]

Because that part of banking was deregulated, they started coming up with schemes of gambling risks undreamed of. The whole derivatives market is a product of this, with things like credit default swaps, forward contracts, hybrid securities, etc. These institutions and the derivatives market is estimated to be around $600,000,000,000,000 (trillion) USD, or an even higher estimate of 1.5 quadrillion dollars, 9.8 or 24.5 times the ENTIRE WORLD'S GDP (currently at $61.06 trillion^[3])! It's estimated that money would be able to give $190,000-220,000 USD to every man, woman, and child on the planet! And the whole thing doesn't produce anything of real value, it doesn't build steel, it doesn't build railroads, it doesn't build automobiles, it doesn't build infrastructure, it builds nothing other than profits and risks beyond human comprehension. It is an extremely dangerous thing to allow to go unregulated and unrestrained. It poses a danger to liberty, and the future of the nation as a whole.

>>29
Nobody really knows. There hasn't been an actual audit of the gold reserves in the Bullion Depository at Fort Knox since the mid 1950s. There was an audit in 2005 by KPMG, but they only audited its operating expenditures (i.e. operating costs to maintain the place, public tourism, etc.), never any of its actual physical gold reserves in its vaults (if they even exist at this point).^[4]
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References:
[1] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rfi/press/glasssteagall.htm
[2] http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/articles/belfer-summers-dir-nat-econ-council-dec08
[3] 2008 Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators
[4] http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1164211260.php