(01-13-2018, 09:09 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(01-13-2018, 04:21 AM)Galen Wrote: Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 was and never has been acknowledged as a default but it was. The Boomers here were alive and probably had and still have no idea what it all meant. In fact, the law fixing the price of gold at about $40 per oz is still on the books but the market feels rather differently about it. It looks like China is introducing a yuan-gold backed oil futures contract which may do the job ending the dollar hegemony since redeeming the contracts in gold takes trust in the yuan out of the equation.
A failure to understand what Nixon did with closing the gold window is not limited to Boomers. By and large I think most people not versed in economic theory fail to understand what he did. Indeed it is possible that Nixon himself didn't understand what he was doing. In my view Nixon made two very grave mistakes...1. He closed the gold window, 2. he made tapes of his skullduggery in the West Wing. Neither are excusable in my view. And I like Nixon, though that could be because his immediate predecessor was warmongering racist, and the two who followed him were utter morons.
The Boomers were there when Nixon closed the gold window and never did figure out what it means. Most of the Millies don't even know that it happened and so expecting them to understand about an event they don't know about is unreasonable. I find the Boomer willful ignorance to be more contemptible.
Nixon probably did understand that he was preventing an immediate dollar crisis. It is unlikely that he thought through the long term implications of initiating the petrodollar. Many people are mystified by why the 28 pages of the 9/11 report were classified and why the US doesn't never seemed to care about Saudi government funding of terrorism. Those of us with an actual understanding of the economics involved are not the least bit surprised.
As for Nixon's successors, it is true that they were idiots. Ford was simply a placeholder and that was all that anyone at that time could be. Carter was a well-intentioned idiot but at least his brother was quite amusing at the time.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Ludwig von Mises
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Ludwig von Mises