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trey4sports
03-15-2009, 04:33 PM
i need to find some sources which provide evidence that america should return to the gold standard because i have to write a paper on that topic.

i NEED adleast.....
1 academic book source
1 journal articale (EBSCO HOST etc etc)
1 newspaper article

if you guys know any sources offhand please link me, thanks

noxagol
03-15-2009, 05:14 PM
A book source, and probably the best IMO, is [u]What has Government Done to Our Money and The Case for a 100% Gold Standard" by Murray Rothbard. He gives a pretty brief but imformative history on money, he goes over what money really is and how it should be derived, and why we should go back to a 100% gold standard. http://www.mises.org/store/What-Has-Government-Done-to-Our-MoneyCase-for-the-100-Percent-Gold-Dollar-P224C18.aspx?AFID=14

Find a newspaper article or journal article by Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, or Lew Rockwell talking about the gold standard or the Austrian Theory on the Business Cycle, that should be pretty good too.

heavenlyboy34
03-15-2009, 05:17 PM
i need to find some sources which provide evidence that america should return to the gold standard because i have to write a paper on that topic.

i NEED adleast.....
1 academic book source
1 journal articale (EBSCO HOST etc etc)
1 newspaper article

if you guys know any sources offhand please link me, thanks

Just do a search on lewrockwell.com. You'll come up with all kinds of things. ;):D Also, "The Creature From Jeckyll Island" (by G. Edward Griffin) plus R.P.'s "The Case For Gold" should give you some ammunition. :)

Truth Warrior
03-15-2009, 06:14 PM
http://www.gold-eagle.com/greenspan041998.html (http://www.gold-eagle.com/greenspan041998.html)

ssdded
03-15-2009, 08:07 PM
i need to find some sources which provide evidence that america should return to the gold standard because i have to write a paper on that topic.

i NEED adleast.....
1 academic book source
1 journal articale (EBSCO HOST etc etc)
1 newspaper article

if you guys know any sources offhand please link me, thanks

If by journal article you mean peer-reviewed journal, try the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. I used an article from it in a persuasive speech in my public speaking class last semester. The Mises Institute puts it online for free and sells subscriptions to hard copies on their online store.

The_Orlonater
03-15-2009, 08:39 PM
http://www.gold-eagle.com/greenspan041998.html (http://www.gold-eagle.com/greenspan041998.html)

+1 for an article

Also, please buy a book on competing currencies.

http://www.mises.org/store/Denationalisation-of-Money-The-Argument-Refined-P567.aspx

This might do.

emazur
03-15-2009, 08:45 PM
I'm currently reading "Gold: The Once and Future Money", a good chunk is available on google books to read free:
http://books.google.com/books?id=m82jozV3Qw4C&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=%22The+emitting+of+paper+money+by+the+authority +of+the+government+is+wisely+prohibited+by+the+ind ividual+states%22&source=bl&ots=MOVYdQ6ycJ&sig=HKQ5OGgtdh0Q7KcP15ohDX0e-y8&hl=en&ei=-k24SeTSO5KasAPQn9A9&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPR3,M1

I'd read the first 2 chapters at least to see the disastrous results throughout history of going off the gold standard. Here are a few notes I took from those chapters:


[The value of an inconvertible paper, depending on its quantity, is a matter of arbitrary regulation] After experience had shown that pieces of paper, of no intrinsic value, by merely bearing upon them the written profession of being equivalent to a certain number of francs, dollars, or pounds, could be made to circulate as such, and to produce all the benefit to the issuers which could have been produced by the coins which they purported to represent; governments began to think that it would be a happy device if they could appropriate to themselves this benefit, free from the condition to which individuals issuing such paper substitutes for money were subject, of giving, when required, for the sign, the thing signified. They determined to try whether they could not emancipate themselves from this unpleasant obligation, and make a piece of paper issued by them pass for a pound, by merely calling it a pound, and consenting to receive it in payment of the taxes. And such is the influence of almost all established governments, that they have generally succeeded in attaining this object: I believe I might say they have always succeeded for a time, and the power has only been lost to them after they had compromised it by the most flagrant abuse.
-John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848

...first known Western coinage: the electrum coins of Lydia in the 7th century BC, consisted of a natural mix of gold in silver found in beds of Patroclus River near Sardis. The kings debased the currency by altering the gold:silver ratio

The failures of soft-money experiments in the ancient Greek states no doubt inspired Solons of Athens, who, soon after he assumed power in 594 BC, struck a new coin and announced that anyone who debased the coin - including himself - would ahve his hand chopped off. In 508 BC, democracy was established in Athens, and the city-state enjoyed a long period of economic and social advancement. The Athenian "owl" was used throughot the Medittarranean, as the Athenians scrupulously maintained the coin's integrity and refused to devalue it even when the Treasury was depleted in times of war. It was a widely accepted currency for six centuries
p. 21

...Plato in 388 or 387 BC, advised the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius, to debase the currency by issuing coins with an overly high face value, and also recommended tin coins. The experiment failed and Plato was reported to be sold into slavery, but his freedom was purchased by a group of fellow philosophers

...Plato's student, Aristotle, rejected soft money and advised his student, Alexander of Macedonia to revive the silver standard

With lower barriers to trade, an expanding circle of commerce, and a sound monetary system, a citizenry nder Alexander's rule could go about happily making themselves wealthy. The citizency had found their champion, and throughout the Mediterranean world the pendulum swung back toward a unified hard currency.
p. 22

Powerful landowners were able to avoid the crushing tax load through legal and illegal means, in effect making themselves independent of the Roman state. Lesser landowners, driven into bankruptcy, signed on as tenants to the large landowners. Some even signed on as slaves, since slaves paid no taxes. Indeed, so many farmers willingly singed themselves into slavery to avoid the tax collector that in AD 368, Emperor Valens declared it illegal to renounce one's liberty in order to seek protectin with a great landlord
p 24

... Christian church rose in popularity, usury scorned

For another thousand years the European feudal system was based on self-sufficient estates that operated primarily without money. The system could be seen as a simple, diffuse form of communism, hte statist reaction to the collapse of the Romans' capitalist empire. What trade existed was carried on in independent towns, each of which had their own tax and tariff systems, making trade with other towns difficult. Roman law, which had bound the entire Medierranean world in one great circle of exchange, had been blown to bits. By 435, coins had fallen out of use in Britain, the outer reaches of the Roman Empire, and they were not adopted again there for 200 more years

While Europe slept, the spirit of commerce was revived in China, where the world's first example of paper money (actually a sort of payment transfer device) emerged in the early ninth century. The Chinese used paper money for another 600-plus years, but the cycle of devaluation and reform was incessant... in 1020 note issuances had reached a point that historians have compared to the 1920s inflation in Germany... The country suffered another hyperdevaluation in the 1160s.
p25

The fourteenth-century Chinese historian Ma Twan-lin later explained:
Paper should never be money (but) only employed as a representative sign of value existing in metals or produce... At first this was the mode in which paper currency was actually used among merchants. The government, borrowing the invention from private individuals, wished to make a real money of paper, and thus the original contrivance was perverted

...rampant devaluation under the Sung and Chin dynasties in the early 1200s preceded the invasion by the Mongols, who reinstated a hard silver currency. Marco Polo described this currency:
"Should any be desirous of procuring gold or silver for the purposes of manufacture, such as drinking cups, girdles or other articles wrought of these metals, they in like manner apply at the mint, and for their paper obtain the bullion they require"

... after decades of mild inflation, from about 1356 the Mongol's paper currency slid into extreme devaluation, and in 1368 a massive uprising led by peasant Chu Yuan-change drove the Mongols from Beijing. Ming dynasty began, and made the same mistakes, but by 1455 returned to wholly metallic coinage that traded at commodity value, which lasted into the 19th century.

...periods of silver shortage led Columbus's voyage in 1492.

... tax hikes and currency debasement ended the Ming dynasty in 1644
p26, 27

Here's an article from Greenspan from 1981 on the gold standard (wall street journal):
http://www.gold-eagle.com/greenspan011098.html

Here's some more interesting info from the chapter I just finished from the book above (this part isn't available online):


In 1933, Britain and France were already anxious to reestablish a sound world monetary system, after the monetary disasters that followed the floating of the pound in 1931. In 1933, a World Economic Conference was held in London, whose purpose was to resolve the world monetary problem and strike an agreement on quick reductions in tariffs worldwide. The United States, whose currency was still near its 1929 level when the conference was scheduled, was expected to lead the European governments back to the world gold standard. At the conference, however, Roosevelt shocked the participants by announcing that he would devalue the dollar. The act, in the eyes of foreigners an unpardonable act of economic nationalism, torpedoed Cordell Hull's attempts to achive quick agreements on tariffs. In that situation, who wanted to open their markets to a country that was about to devalue and undercut them with cheap imports? In late 1933, Roosevelt devalued the dollar from $20.67 per ounce to $35 per ounce of gold - in essence mirroring the European devaluations and bringing exchange rates roughly in line with their pre-1931 levels- and repegged the dollar a that figure in January 1934. The dollar remained officially pegged at $35 per ounce until August 1971.
-229

The breakdown of Europe's monetary order began when Austria, in an attempt to reduce trade barriers, organized a customs union with Germany on March 21, 1931. France opposed the move, and the Bank of France and other major French banks suddenly called in their considerable loans and deposits in Germany and Austria. The strain on Austria's financial system, which was already severly weakened by the economic downturn, was too great, and in the midst of ba banking panic that May, Austria went off the gold standard. Germany was similarly destabilized in July. This provided just the excuse Britain's devaluationists were looking for. As pressure grew on the pound's link with gold, the Bank of England made no attempt to defend the gold standard through a rise in the discount rate, the mechanism by which the bank effectively reduced the supply of base money. (The head of the Bank of England was on vacation at the time, recovering from a nervous breakdown caused by the strains of defending the pound's link to gold, leaving the reins in the hands of underlings with more "modern" ideas.) It was argued that the rise in interest rates would be an additional burden on the deteriorating economy, although the Bank of England raised its discount rate soon after the devaluation as it struggeld to keep the pound from depreciating inot oblivion. Keynes had recommended a devaluation for Britain only a month earlier.
230

More than 20 other countries, including British commonwealth countries, followed Britain's lead by the end of the year. This incensed the Japanese, who competed closely witht the British in the export market. (In 1933, Japan usurped Britain as the world's leading exporter of cotton cloth.) Japan had waged a deflationary struggle to put the yen back on the gold standard in January 1930, but faced with a competitive devaluation by Britain, among its other mounting problems, Japan floated and devalued the yen in December of 1931. After the devaluation, the yen/pound rate returned to roughly its predevaluation level of the 1920s.
231

you have some support from some unexpected allies as well:
The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitively equal, and qualitively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money
- Karl Marx, Capital, 1867

You might wanna check out Adam Smith's works as well - my understanding is that is where the Founders got their ideas for using gold/silver as money

trey4sports
03-15-2009, 09:24 PM
thanx guys, the hardest part was finding a counter argument.......the internetz isnt very friendly to anti-liberty economists :(

Truth Warrior
03-15-2009, 09:31 PM
+1 for an article

Also, please buy a book on competing currencies.

http://www.mises.org/store/Denationalisation-of-Money-The-Argument-Refined-P567.aspx

This might do.

How about letting the free marketplace decide on what to use for a "currency"?

heavenlyboy34
03-15-2009, 09:34 PM
How about letting the free marketplace decide on what to use for a "currency"?

+1776 That's the way to go, IMHO. Individualism and free markets FTW! :)