Saturday November 14, 2020
Election Day -11
66 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
There are all these weird signals I’m getting. I guess you can call them signals. Maybe, datapoints is a better term. Signals sounds like I might need to wear a tin foil hat.
I think it was Peter Thiel who published an op-ed in The Washington Post saying if Biden wants to bring the country together he’ll need a Republican Senate. WTF? The Republican Senate has done nothing to help the country with the Corona virus, refuses to compromise (despite their accusing Nancy Pelosi of that when she has asked, “Compromise on what?” Apparently, on how much money to give their rich friends.) and been busy stuffing the judiciary with unqualified out of touch right wing hacks.
Sam Alito gave a speech to The Federalist Society where he didn’t hold back on right wing Fox News talking points.
Mitch McConnell in league with the Federalistst Society has been busy stuffing the judges from this right wing group onto every level of the judiciary. This will screw up the country for decades and it’s not clear that we will survive this as a democracy.
But now there’s a new game in town. It’s called “Gum Up the Works” for the next administration. Despite the Republican moaning about “reaching across the aisle,” they do everything but that. They don’t even have the decency to admit Joe Biden won. But they know it. How can you tell? Three things: 1) Trump is busy destroying whatever he can before he is forced to leave. Right now he’s working on the intel community in an attempt to cover his tracks and to spite people for doing their jobs. 2) Republicans in Congress are all of a sudden worried about the debt. A sure sign they know the jig is up. They weren’t worried when Paul Ryan and the gang passed that huge tax cut for the rich, but now? Oh boy, 3) This is the most infuriating one. They are trying to put an economic idiot on the Federal Reserve. Her name is Judy Shelton. Like many of her ilk she espouses one thing but lives another.
Judy Shelton is in favor of free trade and a gold standard. Free trade in this case means no rules for companies or individuals. They can do what they want. That is until you get near the Shelton property in rural Virginia then Whoa. She and her husband have gone to court repeatedly to block others from carrying out various projects on the land near their farm.
On the gold standard thing – OMG, this was decided over one hundred years ago, and here we are rehashing this again? She’s so bad that her nomination has been sitting around since last January because not even the conservative Republicans could bring themselves to vote for her. Now? There’s talk of jamming her through. Why? Because she would give any real economist fits. She’s been opposed to the Federal Reserve and now they want to put her on the board?
Let’s make sure everyone understands what’s at stake here. The gold standard (or later the silver standard) is/was the idea that for every paper dollar the government prints they have the equivalent amount of gold in a vault, notably at Fort Knox. The idea being that if you didn’t trust the “guvement” you could go to the bank and cash in your paper dollar for the equivalent amount of gold. That is to say the dollar you had was backed by the precious metal which has real value as opposed to paper. (We can argue if gold has value, but let’s not.)
What I described is over simplified, but that is the idea – basically. At one point the federal government switched to silver because here wasn’t enough gold. They also passed laws saying you couldn’t go to the bank and trade your paper for metal (or you couldn’t own it it bullion form – something like that.) They also said they only needed to keep 7% of the paper money in gold, not 100%. Here’s the problem they kept running into – not enough dollars.
Let’s look at the problem of Not Enough Dollars. The amount of gold in the world does not change. People mine a bit more every year, but the amount that is around is pretty much the same. It’s constant. I once heard that the amount of gold in the world would fill two tennis courts to about six feet. That’s it. If you want to peg your currency to the amount of gold you have then the amount of currency (ie dollars) that are out in the world to spend are fixed too.
So what? So the number of people in the world keeps increasing. Each person needs money to buy things. Our form of money is dollars. If you can’t get dollars what happens? Either another form of currency emerges or the price of things comes down.
If the price of things comes down that’s called a recession until it gets really bad then it’s called a depression. How bad could it get under a gold standard? Real bad. Why? Because if you can’t get dollars to buy stuff it doesn’t matter what the price of something is.
My dad remembers seeing a sign during the Great Depression that said “Land 50 cents an acre.” He thought that the next time he had fifty cents, he’d buy an acre. He never got that acre.
Yet, this simple explanation seems to elude this woman who Satan put up to be on the board of the Fed. She hasn’t been confirmed because the votes weren’t there in the Senate. Now? Now, they are looking at trying to put her on board. Why?
What better way to gum up the works for the incoming Democratic administration?
This isn’t about “playing fair” or “reaching across the aisle” or “doing the right thing” or “helping the American people*”. This is about screwing over your opponent and burning down the house.
*The only time Mitch McConnell refers to the American people is when he’s trying to stop something that would help them, like the ACA.
PS Morning Sun
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