How’s this competitive currency devaluation working out for the USA?

Too big to Fail?

Doubling the money supply?

Doubling the debt?

Red proposes a return to sanity, no matter what the century.

The USA had two previous bouts with economic and financial insanity. In each instance a giant of a POTUS arose to set things right – Jackson and T. Roosevelt.

Jackson’s farewell address reads like prophesy.

Economists are nearly totally devoid of common sense. That is why we are on the precipice of economic calamity.

As far as fiat versus metals, even Friedman said that money supply growth should be firmly constrained to 2% a year.

Also, don’t ridicule Red too much for not having ‘a plan’ given Princeton’s Bernanke not having a plan for his infamous Helicopter drop and also being caught dead wrong on more than one occasion.

ByteMe, I’ll stack my smarts against yours any day of the week.

Icarus identifies one of your problems. This is the other. You are trying to propose a massive economic change without truly understanding the economics behind it. That’s like being a “Fair Tax” proponent without having even the vaguest clue how it will affect the macro economy by putting a strong disincentive on the drivers of our economy (i.e., purchasing products and services). Don’t do it unless you want people who are smarter than you to make fun of you.

And therein lies your problem. And I’m not being facicious about that.

While it’s great to have a long term plan, I’ll take the risk of quoting your hero Keynes here: “In the long run, we are all dead”.

People don’t get to live in the long run. Politicians don’t get elected in the long run. Life is a series of short run decisions. Unless you can link these decisions and get the leaders and the general public behind them to move to your goal, you will never, ever get there.

Most on here who advocate the gold standard or similar plans always say “there has to be a transition period” but will never define what those steps are.

But for a general public that wants the national guard called out when gas lines reach 10 minutes, I think you better have a plan to get the populous thru your transition period if you don’t want total soical chaos when you create a logorythmic deflation trying to get the economy back to where it was 100 years ago.

And if you don’t have enough gold, you can’t have enough currency. And anything that’s in short supply suddenly has an inflated price. Which means deflation for the economy when it needs to grow beyond the currently available sources of gold. Good job tying the economy to a scavenger hunt for shiny things.

Why do I have the urge to rent Cincinnati Kid which I believe has Jackie Gleason (the original Miami Vice ) as Minnesota Fats?

I’m really not interested in returning to the economy of 100 years ago.