In some ways I agree with Wowbanger. Many others have made just as accurate predictions, Ron Paul is not some sort of economics genius. In fact some of his ideas like how the gold standard is great are highly suspect.
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Originally Posted by Wowbanger TIP:
Ron Paul saw it coming? So did Karl Marx, and from a damn sight further away. that doesn't mean we should swallow the rest of their ****.

Headbanger, there is a world of difference between predicting the eventual decline of the capitalist system, and predicting the sub-prime mess six years before it happened. What's wrong - jealous Ron Paul beat you to it?
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Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
In some ways I agree with Wowbanger. Many others have made just as accurate predictions, Ron Paul is not some sort of economics genius. In fact some of his ideas like how the gold standard is great are highly suspect.

Yes, I consider the Gold Standard just to be a halfway house to our present system. The constitutional position is silver (hence the dollar) and gold coin - silver being a far more abundant metal, yet one which maintains value and withstands market fluctuations far better than gold. Gold of course if far easier to concentrate into the vaults of a few banks, whereas silver is made to be coined and to allow real wealth to stay in the pockets of the people as the ultimate in decentralised money. But since the feds can't roll out more silver on a whim, and thus manipulate the economy and create inflation, it must conveniently be taken out of circulation, replaced by a gold standard, and the metal standard ultimately abolished. People should be allowed to get their own gold, platinum and silver minted at banks as they wish, and without any external fixing of their relative price. Paper money should only be bank receipts for actual deposited coin. And, the history of banking cartel's attack on the constitution should be just recompensed:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

and for the other side of the Atlantic, Blackstone:
When a given weight of gold or silver is of a given fineness, it is then of the true standard, and called sterling metal. And of this sterling metal all the coin of the kingdom must be made, by the statute 25 Edw. III c. 13 (Coinage, 1351). So that the king's prerogative seemeth not to extend to the debasing or inhancing the value of the coin, below or above the sterling value.
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Originally Posted by For_England:
Headbanger, there is a world of difference between predicting the eventual decline of the capitalist system, and predicting the sub-prime mess six years before it happened. What's wrong - jealous Ron Paul beat you to it?

Paul in fact wrongly identified the cause of the house price bubble as the supposed guarantee of the GSEs by the Fed. If this had been the case then there would have been no identical bubble in the UK which has no equivalents of the GSEs.

The bubble was generated by surplus capital looking for returns in a de-industrialized society. Deindustrialised by the exact processes of labour price competition described by Marx and surplus capital generated by the exploitative instincts of capitalism as described by Marx. Marx was bang on, Paul was not.

Any amount of people predicted this, take a look on Housepricecrash.com. For my part I withdrew my assets (such as they are) from the property market almost at peak. As it was my exposure was limited exactly because I refused the financial advice of several professionals to leverage my way into the property market in a big way. Not only did I see this crash coming but I acted accordingly.
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Originally Posted by For_England:
Yes, I consider the Gold Standard just to be a halfway house to our present system. The constitutional position is silver (hence the dollar) and gold coin - silver being a far more abundant metal, yet one which maintains value and withstands market fluctuations far better than gold. Gold of course if far easier to concentrate into the vaults of a few banks, whereas silver is made to be coined and to allow real wealth to stay in the pockets of the people as the ultimate in decentralised money. But since the feds can't roll out more silver on a whim, and thus manipulate the economy and create inflation, it must conveniently be taken out of circulation, replaced by a gold standard, and the metal standard ultimately abolished. People should be allowed to get their own gold, platinum and silver minted at banks as they wish, and without any external fixing of their relative price. Paper money should only be bank receipts for actual deposited coin. And, the history of banking cartel's attack on the constitution should be just recompensed:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

and for the other side of the Atlantic, Blackstone:
When a given weight of gold or silver is of a given fineness, it is then of the true standard, and called sterling metal. And of this sterling metal all the coin of the kingdom must be made, by the statute 25 Edw. III c. 13 (Coinage, 1351). So that the king's prerogative seemeth not to extend to the debasing or inhancing the value of the coin, below or above the sterling value.

You can't run an late modern industrial economy on the Gold Standard, or any other precious metal, which is why nobody does. It is too inflexible and there just is not enough metal.

Unfortunately it appears you can't run one on a fiat currency either. Which would seem to present us with something of a problem....
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Originally Posted by For_England:
Yes, I consider the Gold Standard just to be a halfway house to our present system. The constitutional position is silver (hence the dollar) and gold coin - silver being a far more abundant metal, yet one which maintains value and withstands market fluctuations far better than gold. Gold of course if far easier to concentrate into the vaults of a few banks, whereas silver is made to be coined and to allow real wealth to stay in the pockets of the people as the ultimate in decentralised money. But since the feds can't roll out more silver on a whim, and thus manipulate the economy and create inflation, it must conveniently be taken out of circulation, replaced by a gold standard, and the metal standard ultimately abolished. People should be allowed to get their own gold, platinum and silver minted at banks as they wish, and without any external fixing of their relative price. Paper money should only be bank receipts for actual deposited coin. And, the history of banking cartel's attack on the constitution should be just recompensed:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

and for the other side of the Atlantic, Blackstone:
When a given weight of gold or silver is of a given fineness, it is then of the true standard, and called sterling metal. And of this sterling metal all the coin of the kingdom must be made, by the statute 25 Edw. III c. 13 (Coinage, 1351). So that the king's prerogative seemeth not to extend to the debasing or inhancing the value of the coin, below or above the sterling value.

The problem with that is it would likely be massively inflationary and not necessary. You could easily back money by actual goods and labour and get commodity money.
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Originally Posted by For_England:
Headbanger, there is a world of difference between predicting the eventual decline of the capitalist system, and predicting the sub-prime mess six years before it happened. What's wrong - jealous Ron Paul beat you to it?

Ron Paul didn't get it exactly right I believe. Marx and those like him including Keynes who see a grave problem in capitalism with overcapitalisation and overproduction are quite close.
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Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
The problem with that is it would likely be massively inflationary and not necessary. You could easily back money by actual goods and labour and get commodity money.

But I can't see how digging silver from mines could even compare to the feds or bank of england printing new money. Compare what a pound or dollar could buy fifty years ago with today, and then compare the amount of silver it could buy then with what the same amount of silver could buy today, and I would suspect there would be little comparison. The thing about silver and gold is that they don't have to be backed - they have intrinsic value and they themselves are coined and in the pocket, not IOUs.
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Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
Ron Paul didn't get it exactly right I believe. Marx and those like him including Keynes who see a grave problem in capitalism with overcapitalisation and overproduction are quite close.

Yes I agree, however there seems to have been specific issues that led to this particular crash, dating back to laws passed in the Clinton administration, and not the inevitability of it because of capitalism per se (though I agree the seeds to capitalism' eventual destruction are within it). Forcing companies to operate sub primes in the name of not discriminating against minorities who otherwise wouldn't qualify, being one of them. And the idea that it wasn't caused by GSEs because it affected the UK is silly - all the GSEs would need to do is effect the US market -the US market would then effect the UK, irrespective of the cause. I the UK had GSEs, Britain would have caused its own problems, but that doesn't mean America's GSEs didn't indirectly cause the UK's issues.
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Originally Posted by For_England:
But I can't see how digging silver from mines could even compare to the feds or bank of england printing new money. Compare what a pound or dollar could buy fifty years ago with today, and then compare the amount of silver it could buy then with what the same amount of silver could buy today, and I would suspect there would be little comparison. The thing about silver and gold is that they don't have to be backed - they have intrinsic value and they themselves are coined and in the pocket, not IOUs.

I'm not sure they do have instrinsic value, they are just shiny bits of metal. But most importantly they have litte relation to the level of production in the actual economy, whereas backing currency with goods and productive capacity does have this relationship.
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