Alan Greenspan: We Can Always Print More Money.

I think he was making the point that our fiat system prevents this country from defaulting on its debts because printing more cash is an available strategy. I think he meant no more and no less.

The complete ignorance of this guy baffles me, well not really. The more money they print out of thin air the more they default on the people. People who have money in treasurery bonds and people who have money saved are being defaulted on everyday through inflation.

If that were to happen, Hawk, what would happen would be that US dollars would no longer be in as much demand as they are now. Anything that declines in demand rate also declines in price and value. What we would see here is about a 30-35% drop in the purchasing power of the US dollar, which is to say that everything would go up in price by that amount. The wages of workers would probably follow but there would be some delay and some hardship created by that delay. The real victims of this would be the folks barely making it and living on a fixed income that does not increase along with prices.

Who wrote this?

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

Not exactly.

If purchasing power drops 33% ($3 buys what $2 used to) prices go up 50%.

I'm not completely familiar with the condition of the British economy, so cannot converse intelligently on that subject. I suppose that my 1st question would be, "Is the British economy better off than the US?". It might be. But then again, it might not be. When my wife and I toured Britain in 2001, I thought that the prices there were absolutely outrageous. I very much understand why British citizens, by and large, do not save for their retirement outside of their government plan. They simply have to spend every cent they earn just to live. The thought of "discretionary funds" would be pocket change and not real money.

We also know that the British government has implemented an austerity program that is aimed at improving their economy. Whether or not it will succeed in doing so is not known at the present time. I am hopeful, though, that it will if it reduces government spending and borrowing. That would be a major step in the right direction and one that we all hope will catch on with other governments around the world that spend more than they have.



To quote a phrase, "not exactly". If $1 worth of stuff sees a 35% increase, it goes to $1.35 not $1.50, as in your example. Number quibbling aside, the fact is that the loss of WRC status would be very expensive for most US citizens, many of whom are blissfully unaware that there even IS a WRC, let alone that the US dollar is it.