22 July 2020

Trump and the GOP Vote for a Return to the 19th Century w/ Fed Official Who Supports the Gold Standard

2 old friends are chatting back in the '90s.
"Sergey," Peter says, "I have to admit that I don't understand the telephone. You, you know so much. Explain it to me."
"Ah, Peter," Sergey says. "It is simple. Imagine a very long dachshund. His tail is on one side of the city and his snout is on the other. You pull his tail on one side of the city and he barks on the other side of the city." Sergey finishes with a smile. "That is how a phone works."
"Ah," Peter says. "This, Sergey, is why I love you. Now I understand."
They sit together in companionable silence for awhile. Then Peter says, "Well what about these new cell phones? How do they work?"
Sergey spreads his hands out over the horizon and says, "Same concept. No dog."

The Senate has voted for a Federal Reserve candidate who believes in the gold standard. It takes a special lack of understanding of what money is to think that somehow involving a piece of metal makes it safer. 

(And to anyone who thinks gold is preferable to fiat money, do this. Take about $100 in gold to a mall, a store, or an online retailer. I'll take about $100 to the same place. Let's see who is able to buy more.) 

Fiat money may confuse the same people confused about cell phones but it has a ton of advantages over gold.

Preferring the gold standard to fiat money is akin to preferring smoke signals to texting. Sure you can better see the source of the signals with the smoke rather than the texting that just magically appears out of thin air into your hand but what you can do with smoke signals is so much more limited and so much more prone to error, even if it does seem easier to understand.

Every Republican senate committee member voted for the woman who supports the gold standard to join the Fed. In 2020.

Next they'll replace Dr. Fauci with a shaman, which was also considered state of the art centuries ago.

It is as if there is a big swath of the country convinced that they'll be giving out awards for stupidity at the end of the year.

Article on Fed nomination at The Hill.

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