A Money Revolt Is Needed: Fix The Dollar With Gold
Steve Forbes, Steve Lonegan, Ralph Benko at FixTheDollar debut rally. Photo by Paul Dupont |
Steve Forbes, with Elizabeth Ames, in Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It, has thought the issues through. So has, among others, Lewis E. Lehrman (founder and chairman of the Lehrman Institute, whose monetary policy website this columnist professionally edits) in The True Gold Standard and Money, Gold, and History.
Now, to these thinkers, comes activist Steve Lonegan. Lonegan, former mayor of Bogota, NJ and GOP US Senatorial nominee, ambitiously, is launching, for American Principles In Action, FixTheDollar.com (also advised by this columnist). FixTheDollar is designed to become a mass movement to ignite a Money Revolt and, with it, restore the American Dream.
The launch of this effort recently was described by The Ridgewood Blog in an article entitled Steve Forbes and Steve Lonegan Team up to Mend the Fed and Restore a Classical Gold Standard:
... By restoring the classical gold standard, and if possible changing a few laws so as to permit competing currencies, America can create a climate of equitable prosperity that will generate tens of millions of good new jobs, end wage stagnation, restore a climate of opportunity wherein everyone – blue or white collar, of every age, race, and creed – can climb the ladder to affluence, balance the federal budget via economic growth, provide the resources to improve the natural environment and fix our decaying national infrastructure.
What changed? Monetary policy changed, and dramatically. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, under Reagan, had instituted the Great Moderation. This was sustained thereafter during the first two terms of his successor, Alan Greenspan. The Great Moderation led to sizzling job growth.
Thereafter… the Fed destabilized the dollar, causing boom and bust cycles. The economy soon collapsed, leading to further monetary shenanigans by a desperate Fed.
Want a vibrant economy? It will take a Money Revolt. Washington, curiously tone deaf on this issue, needs to hear from the people.
Forbes and Lonegan addressed a standing room only crowd in a bistro (converted from an old bank, with huge safe doors as décor) around the corner from Wall Street on September 3rd. Forbes:
By comparison, Bush saw the creation of little more than 1 million, Obama little more than 4 million, net new jobs. Bush and Obama, notwithstanding special pleading by their respective apologists, have nothing to be proud of on the score of job creation, nor in breaking the curse of wage stagnation which began in earnest under Nixon, nor in the creation of a climate of equitable prosperity.
Washington is missing in action. Enter FixTheDollar.com. It aspires to move into a critical policy vacuum … in much the same way as did MoveOn.org (with its demand the Congress censure Clinton and move on, and then for a non-militaristic response to 9/11).
Mass movements all have this in common: when the political elites abdicate on an important issue it makes room for populist agitators, like Lonegan, to rally the grass roots to action.
From FixTheDollar.com,“How You and I Can Restore American Prosperity, A message from Steve Lonegan”
We remember this as a Golden Age.
Equitable prosperity happened even though America had piled on massive debt to fight the Second World War and the lives and careers of millions of people were disrupted by the war. Equitable prosperity continued solidly through the 50s and the 60s.
Equitable prosperity began to sputter, and die, in the 70s. We have had extended periods under Presidents Reagan and Clinton with sizzling job growth. But on average, the past 40 or so years have been an era of wage stagnation and rising prices with regular working families treading water and struggling to break even. ...
What changed in the 1970s? We can point to the very day on which the American Dream died: August 15, 1971.
On that night, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation announcing that he was closing the gold window — the mechanism that made the dollar as good as gold. It, together with other, shorter-lived measures, was called “the Nixon Shock.”
You can see his speech here.
Those four minutes contained the death knell of the American Dream.
America is resilient. By grasping why and what went wrong, together you and I can resurrect equitable prosperity.
... FixTheDollar does not stand for End the Fed. FixTheDollar stands for Mend the Fed.
The Federal Reserve System was invented to work within the classical gold standard. What, then, is to be done? If the Fed follows “the golden rule” — a better version of the Great Moderation that led to the great job growth under Presidents Reagan and Clinton — we can restore the American Dream.
... With your participation, America will enter a new Golden Age and lead the world into unprecedented peace and prosperity.
Fix the dollar.
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Ralph Benko is senior advisor, economics, to American Principles in Action’s Gold Standard 2012 Initiative, and a contributor to the ARRA News Service. His article first appeared in Forbes
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