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View Full Version : David Frum needs a history lesson




Knightskye
02-22-2010, 02:06 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/22/frum.ron.paul.gold/

Ron Paul's getting a lot of attention from his CPAC straw poll win.

David Frum wrote an editorial for CNN explaining why America went off the gold standard.


Between 1929 and 1932, the U.S. money supply collapsed, as banks failed and bank deposits and commercial credit vanished. In their classic "Monetary History of the United States" (1966), Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz identified this contraction of the money supply as the proximate cause of the Great Depression. Why didn't the Federal Reserve act to prevent the contraction? Again: the gold standard.

Why'd they inflate in the first place, Frum?

He needs a copy of Meltdown. And if he sees this thread for whatever reason, he can go here (http://www.meltdownthebook.com/offers/offer.php?id=MEL001) and receive a free chapter of it by e-mail.

What do you guys think?

low preference guy
02-22-2010, 03:36 PM
yes, let's mail Frum a copy of meltdown

specialK
02-23-2010, 01:06 AM
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/22/frum.ron.paul.gold/

Ron Paul's getting a lot of attention from his CPAC straw poll win.

David Frum wrote an editorial for CNN explaining why America went off the gold standard.



Why'd they inflate in the first place, Frum?

He needs a copy of Meltdown. And if he sees this thread for whatever reason, he can go here (http://www.meltdownthebook.com/offers/offer.php?id=MEL001) and receive a free chapter of it by e-mail.

What do you guys think?

I think he's only been American for less than 3 years. Not surprising he doesnt know US history.

pacelli
02-23-2010, 06:54 AM
David Frum really needs an emergency enema.

johnrocks
02-23-2010, 07:25 AM
Frum is part of the reason the word "conservative" is a joke to so many, I don't know who gets on my nerves more; Paul Krugman or this neo con POS!

angelatc
02-23-2010, 07:28 AM
Nobody will ever mistake Frum for a policy wonk, that's for sure.

Brian Defferding
02-23-2010, 10:10 AM
Aaaand he just posted this tripe: (http://www.frumforum.com/an-even-worse-ron-paul-idea)


An Even Worse Ron Paul Idea
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:38 am by David Frum | 3 Comments |
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My weekend CNN.com column about the defects of the gold standard discussed the classical gold standard, i.e. the standard as it operated in the United States from 1913 to 1934 and in Great Britain through most of the 19th century. The classical gold standard implied a central bank, a lender of last resort that could raise discount rates as gold supplies dwindled.

As many Ron Paulists have written to remind me, Ron Paul opposes central banks. He wants gold but no Federal Reserve, no lender of last resort.

That’s a very different idea from the classical gold standard – a much stupider idea.

As with the classical gold standard, Paul-style money policy got a quarter-century trial in the United States, from 1836 until 1862. Over those years, the federal government had no role in the issuance of paper money at all. As far as the feds were concerned, gold and silver were the only “money.” State-chartered banks however were free to create currency if they chose, buyer beware.

The result: an inflation and depression cycle like no other in U.S. history.

Over that quarter century, the U.S. experienced two of the most savage depressions in history, 1837 and 1857, and was only spared a third in 1846-48 (the “hungry Forties,” when the rest of the world economy slumped) because of the chance discovery of gold in California.

One more note: It’s embarrassing and absurd that we are even debating these points. Monetary policy is not exactly an under-discussed field of study. Many great minds have worked on these issues, and while they disagree among themselves, all of them would dismiss Paul’s nostrums as the monetary equivalent of Ptolemaic astronomy. And yet these ideas have a grip – not only on a plurality of CPAC attendees, but are propounded nightly by the most popular right-wing broadcaster in the country.

At a time when the U.S. is threatened by the sharpest lurch to state direction and control since the New Deal, people who ought to be leading the fight for economic freedom have managed to discover and commit themselves to one of the rare sets of ideas even more wrong and catastrophic than Barack Obama’s.

Apparently he thinks we need the history lesson. The irony scale goes off the charts.

Epic
02-23-2010, 10:15 AM
Apparently there's nothing that can't be fixed by just stealing people's purchasing power with inflation.

Pay no attention to the fractional-reserve banking behind the curtain...