by Bill Bonner
Acting Man
Faking It
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. […] 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. — Alan Greenspan, 1961
BALTIMORE – That old rascal! Before joining the feds, former Fed chief Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan was a strong proponent of gold and the gold standard. He wrote clearly and forcefully about how it was necessary to restrain the Deep State and protect individual freedom.
Then he went to Washington and faced a fork in the tongue. In one direction, lay honesty and integrity. In the other, lay power and glory.
Under the Bretton Woods monetary system, the U.S. promised foreign central banks that it would convert their dollars to gold at a fixed price of $35 an ounce. This constrained the amount of dollars the U.S. could print to the amount of gold it had in its reserves.