Here's were the conspiracy theorist in me comes out, you probably haven't noticed until now.Didn't you say something about \"extracting the facts\"? And there's a big disclaimer at the bottom about how this does not necessarily represent the views of the St. Louis brach of the Fed. One of the things about research, even when the gov charters it, is that those in charge understand that sometimes research has to go against the grain.
Take a brief walk through history and you'll see lies, manipulations, etc.Those in power tend to abuse it in some form or another. I can show you so many manupuled figures from almost all government agencies it'll make your head spin. The truth is hidden most cases.. and when money is involved, all bets are off.
The paper states that a commodity based system is easily measurable and a floating sytem is less so, but it doesn't say the system itself is more stable. It suggest that fiat currency is subject to the same trends, inflation, etc than a commodity based system which isn't true at all.The paper I linked to actually states flat out that a commodity system is the only system whose stability we can measure consistently. It's a treatment of the measurable facts.
This is incorrect. Our representative money was not treated as an equivalent to commodity based money- Matter of fact, in 1861 greenback were issued and confidence in the paper currency dwindled so much so that the U.S government had to create interest-bearing notes because the citizens were wise enough to see the system and monitary supply was being manipulated. The interest inspired citizens to hold onto the currency which(consumer confidence?) helped finance our civil war.The paper states that from 1880 to 1913 the manner in which our representative money was treated was equivalent in all measurable aspects to a true commodity system. The Fed was created in 1913. Prior to this point there was no central bank to execute fractional reserve banking.
If prior to 1880, the government was manipluating currency and providing interest-bearing notes to inspire citizens to not redeem then for cotten, how then, could a more recent system be the equivalent and measurable to a true commodity based system? There has always been manipulations of the currency since the inception of representative money, any manipulation is not a commodity system and cannot be used as a measurement against the said system.
I hate to nit-pick, but full-faith is intangible and commodity is tangible- perceived value vs. real value.Well, it's not that simple. I'd say it's more like \"Intangible value vs. tangible value\". About the only thing our currency is good at is burning. Gold can be made into jewelry, etc. So yes, your point still stands.
I'm glad catch22 and Goob find this interesting. If you have questions, ask away.
Which has made him a lot of money, now that silver is at 13! Wish I had emptied my Mutual funds when it was at 7 like I wanted to and my dad talked me out of!