A Quote by John Maynard Keynes
In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic. All of us, from the Governor of the Bank of England downwards, are now primarily interested in preserving the stability of business, prices, and employment, and are not likely, when the choice is forced on us, deliberately to sacrifice these to outworn dogma, which had its value once, of 3 pounds, 17 shill ings, 10 1/2 pence per ounce. Advocates of the ancient standard do not observe how remote it now is from the spirit and the requirements of the age. A regulated nonmetallic standard has slipped in unnoticed. It exists.
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In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
We have to decide whether our fear is going to get the better of us. Once upon a time we had a standard in our country that was 'innocent until proven guilty.' We've given up on so much. Now, people are talking about a standard that is 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' Think about it. Is that the standard we're willing to live under?
You could own coins but you couldn't have bars of gold. We were on the gold standard. I think it was Nixon who took us off the gold standard.
A gold standard doesn't imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.
The problem right now is that central banks have not normalized their balance sheet since 2009. They're trying, but it's not even close. If we had another crisis tomorrow, and you had to do QE4 and QE5, how could you do that when you're already at $4 trillion? They might have to turn to the IMF or SDR or to Gold. Then, if you go back to the gold standard, you have to get the price right. People say there's not enough gold to support a gold standard. That's nonsense. There's always enough gold, it's just a question of price.
I honestly believe that this is one of the greatest secrets to true peace of mind -- a decent sense of values. We could annihilate 50 percent of all our worries at once if we would develop a sort of private gold standard -- a gold standard of what things are worth to us in terms of our lives.
Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. In actuality, it is better than a gold standard, because violence has universal value. Violence transcends the quirks of philosophy, religion, technology, and culture. () It's time to quit worrying and learn to love the battle axe. History teaches us that if we don't, someone else will.
If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.
The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden 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.
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.
Asked if he knew how important Stardust would be, Mitchell Parish said he did have a gut feeling that this was a momentous one. But had no idea it would become a standard. You don't sit down and write a standard, he explained. A standard evolves.
All music now, I think, is fair game for jazz musicians to interpret, and they have been. I would consider those songs standards now. "Norwegian Wood" is a standard; "Call Me" is a standard.
The gold standard makes the money's purchasing power independent of the changing, ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.
The standard is not writ on the stone. The definition of the standard is that it is the best way to do the job for now. It should be regarded as a next step to make further improvement.
The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard.
Righteousness has to do with the vertical standard that God gives us to please Him. Justice has to do with the horizontal expression of that righteous standard in the lives of others.
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