"I am not against bank notes as such … I want to give everybody the right to issue his own banknotes. The problem then would be to get other men to accept such private banknotes; maybe nobody will take them."
Regardless of how knowledgeable we are and regardless of various technological ideas, without an expanding pool of real savings, expansion in economic growth is not going to emerge.
That Bretton Woods was called a gold standard was an exercise in obfuscation. It happened for the same reason that NAFTA was called free trade. The state has long used the language of the market economy as a plow to push through its opposite.
The Swiss state should end antigold regulations, end negative interest rates, and return to zero rates on bank reserves. These are small steps on their own, perhaps, but would be progress away from the brewing mess that is the eurozone.
Since the present monetary system is fundamentally unstable, there cannot be a "correct" money supply growth rate. The present monetary system emerged because money creation was politically necessary to sustain the fractional reserve banking system.
It should be clear by now that the unbacked paper money system is not only a cause of crises, it is also the central instrument of control for the oligarchic party elites and their supporters.
Americans have benefited mightily by holding and trading with the world’s reserve currency, though most people haven’t given it a thought. No one remembers when the pound sterling held this distinction a hundred years ago.
The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of money under the gold standard is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments.
The taxpayer is backstopping more credit risk than ever. The Post reported that nearly 30 percent of the loans Fannie Mae guaranteed were to borrowers whose house payment exceeded half of their monthly income, up from 14 percent in 2016.
