South Africa police standoff with illegal gold miners escalates
The police sealed off access to the Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein several weeks ago to deny the miners access to food and other essentials.
David Frum, former President Bush speech writer and now blog publisher, inveighed against the gold standard one more time (link is currently down).
The Republican Party has seen a drift from traditional conservatism with more libertarian ideas taking hold. Ron Paul, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, was a strong finish in the Ames Straw Poll, finishing a close second to Michele Bachman. Paul would like to see a return to gold-backed currency to bring back more financial discipline and less run-away spending by the Federal government.
Frum believes the medicine is worse than the cure:
The United States adhered to the classic gold standard for a surprisingly short time: from 1873 until 1934 with a brief time-out during World War I.
And for most Americans, the gold standard of 1873-1934 delivered pretty miserable results, including two terrible depressions (1893-1896 and 1929-1940) plus the long grinding squeeze of the deflation of 1873-1893. I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that the years of the U.S. gold standard were years of violent labor strife, radical ideology, attacks on the political system by a series of protest parties, and two presidential assassinations.
Frum has been critical of gold in other posts.
Frum and other writers have been reflecting on the value of a gold-backed currency since we are now at the 40 year anniversary when the U.S. dropped the gold standard.
Image from Wikipedia
2 Comments
Kingassociates
Frum also promoted the New American Century in which the US was supposed to go after WMD in Iraq and bomb anyone who it didn’t like, eg France. He invented the Axis of Evil term and helped involve the US and Europe in ruinous wars and neglect of their economies while China and Asia increased their exports to us while laughing themselves silly. He’s a great contrarian indicator. Buy gold and silver like the Chinese! Depressions are due to politicians’ economic incompetence. The gold standard responsible for labour strife and presidential assassinations? Why not earthquakes too?
rpp
I can understand a piece of garbage like Frum saying this. How does it reflect on this author?