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You are here: Home / Reflections in a golden eye

Reflections in a golden eye

by | 79 Comments

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Reader PZ recently pointed out to me that the Bill Taggart wedding speech that Paul Ryan loves so much isn’t just an endorsement of gold-backed currency, it’s an endorsement of gold coingage; it asserts “that we should not use credit cards or checks or currency at all“.

Conservatives Jimmy P and Charles Lane recently wrote that they opposed moving to a gold-backed currency. But the tone wasn’t “damn those wingaz is crazy” but rather “while serious people might favor a gold standard, there are some reasons blah blah blah.”

I can’t help but feel that we’re fucked, that soon enough the EXTREME LEFT will want no gold standard, the EXTREME RIGHT will want gold coinage, and the sensible centrists will agree that paper money backed by gold is the most serious choice.

There’s got to be some kind of way out of here.

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Jesus H. Christ. The last thing I’m going to start worrying about is the return of the gold standard.

  6. 6.

    Turgidson

    Bobo will surely offer up a column full of sociological research he made up the day before dividing us into “fiaters” and “goldies” and discuss how the “fiaters” oppose the gold standard because omg hippies, while the “goldies” are courageous, noble champions of a cause that we’d all agree was just and correct if it wasn’t for the damn hippies and America’s moral decline.

    (hey David Brooks, I just gave you a column idea you can’t possibly pass up. I expect a large check after you vomit it out. thanks in advance)

  7. 7.

    BGinCHI

    I assume the gold standard would be accompanied by more gold diggers.

    I would applaud the return of the Solid Gold Dancers, honestly.

  8. 8.

    Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (formerly IrishGirl)

    There’s got to be some kind of way out of here.

    Said the Joker to the Thief

  12. 12.

    weaselone

    Well, the gold standard would be unlikely to last long. The economy would collapse in short order or sane Americans would start using one of the major foreign currencies. Probably a combination of the two. Fiat currency was adopted for reasons beyond a desire on the part sovereigns to debase the currency.

  15. 15.

    cathyx

    Oh, I get it. It goes with the idea that the republicans want us to go back to the 1800’s when everyone carried a bag of gold coins to pay for stuff. And women knew their place, too.

  16. 16.

    Richard

    We’re going to need tweezers to pull those $1 gold coins out of our change purses, I think.

  18. 18.

    Frankensteinbeck

    There’s got to be some kind of way out of here.

    Reelect Obama. Plunge the racists into despair by showing them that throwing absolutely everything they could at him still could not chase a black man out of office. The level of insanity on the Right will drop sharply. They are operating on anger, not principles, and that includes most of their leaders.

  20. 20.

    Matt McIrvin

    The thing is, this cuts crosswise with the interests of the very rich. While people who have a lot of money like the idea of a super-strong dollar, no asshole financier actually wants the total economic cataclysm that would be caused by a return to the gold standard, and most of them are smart enough to realize that this would happen.

    The other wrinkle, though, is that by this very fact, some lefties of the posturing-tough-guy persuasion are going to be tempted to join the goldbugs just to stick it to Wall Street. I suspect that Matt Taibbi is halfway there already, judging from his complaints about quantitative easing; the bit about how QE is the magical creation of fake money could have come out of one of Ron Paul’s newsletters.

  21. 21.

    cathyx

    @Omnes Omnibus: You’re right. So the 1% will have the bag of gold coins, and the rest of us will be running after their carriage and begging for them to throw us one so we can spend it and therefore, keep the economy going.

  23. 23.

    Poopyman

    No reason to get excited.
    There are many among us here who feel that life isRepublicans are but a joke.

  26. 26.

    hoppipolla

    @raven: shouldn’t that be “jejeunesse”? damn, that’s just fun to say. and thank you DougJ for forcing me to play All Along the Watchtower at bunny-frightening volume.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    the sensible centrists will agree that paper money backed by gold is the most serious choice.

    Has anyone considered gold money backed by paper?

  29. 29.

    Hawes

    Given how devastating the gold standard would be for everyone who works with money, I don’t think we have to worry about it.

  31. 31.

    low-tech cyclist

    There’s got to be some kind of way out of here.

    I really, really wish I could honestly say, “No reason to get excited.”

    But let’s not talk falsely now, because the hour is getting late.

  32. 32.

    Spaghetti Lee

    I like to call it “Gollum Economics.” We mustn’t lose the precious gold standard…

  33. 33.

    Reklam

    Actually I think the Chunky Bobo is the more likely culprit for dragging the gold standard centrist. It appeals to an absolute standard; even if that standard is patently specious. Because the hippies and Vatican II something something relativism…

  34. 34.

    PZ

    Only solution-reanimate William Jennings Bryant to give his “Cross of Gold” speech in Charlotte. Of course, it might take him awhile to accept we have a black President…

  38. 38.

    Haydnseek

    @cathyx: But look on the bright side! It will be so much easier to pay for cancer surgery with a bag of gold coins instead of 4 million chickens…

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Also, if we go on the gold standard, some megalomaniac will try to irradiate all the gold at Fort Knox and we will have to be saved by a British guy and a lipstick lesbian.

  41. 41.

    schrodinger's cat

    Don’t worry its not going to happen, the banksters and the 1% won’t let it happen. Republicans in power always defer to them, since that is their true constituency.

  46. 46.

    hoppipolla

    Je-jeune!
    Without a clue in my head
    Without a thought of my own

    Je-jeune!
    I think Ayn Rand is the nazz
    It’s easy being a clone

  49. 49.

    Haydnseek

    @hoppipolla: I didn’t activate the Googler before I posted. I REALLY hope it’s there, or somewhere. It’s on their “White Music” LP from 1978.

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SiubhanDuinne: You plan on spending late nights asking where DougJ, Cole and I are and why we aren’t talking to you? Or are you going to post the Numa, Numa song?

  51. 51.

    hoppipolla

    @Haydnseek: oh my stars and garters, i don’t know what i expected but it wasn’t that. it’s like the band did a vulcan mind-meld with Liquid Liquid right before they hit the “record” button.

    damn, now i’m going to have to haul out that live at the beeb boxed set.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I wake up at 3 a.m. every night and wonder where you, Cole and DougJ are and why you aren’t talking to me. But I hope I have more sense than to ask it out loud in public. Over. And over. And over. And over again.

  57. 57.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Come on, Wall street would veto madness like that. We can’t be that far gone.

  58. 58.

    dance around in your bones

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Heh, I once typed out a whole comment a la Little Boots but deleted it because I thought it was mean.

    Now, of course, I have negated that whole compassionate impulse…..

    Bad me! Bad me!

  59. 59.

    hoppipolla

    @Haydnseek: Transistor Blast: The Best of the BBC Sessions, 1998 on Cooking Vinyl. Fourth disc is a full live show during which Andy Partridge is healed of his cold. or so he says in the liner notes, and it certainly sounds that way. also, on the first disc, an even-more-psychedelic-than-the-original Garden of Earthly Delights. trails, man…

  60. 60.

    BruinKid

    This is why I’ve been saying for a while we needed to push back much more strongly against Ron Paul’s psycho ideas, but too many liberals just laughed it off and said it wasn’t worth our time, or even ignored issues like this and kept praising Paul for some of his other stances.

  63. 63.

    hoppipolla

    @Haydnseek: ah, the Firesigns. i was about to say the kids will never know what they missed, and then i realized i sound like my mom talking about Bob and Ray. getting old is so weird.

  64. 64.

    Haydnseek

    @hoppipolla: Thank you for the detailed info. We live in a wondrous age when something like this can be obtained without too much heartburn…I’ll find it. It sounds like something I…need. Vinyl addiction is a treatable condition that I have no intention of dealing with. Best to ya…oh yeah, one more post, #63. I know just what you’re talking about.

  65. 65.

    Sgaile-beairt

    Most of the old school prayer anti abortion protester social warriors writing decline and fall of the Xtian west editorials back in the seventies were also goldbuggers. It just went together like pb and j….nobody ever questioned it that i recall.!

  68. 68.

    danielx

    @cathyx:

    Where have I seen that before…oh yes, in A Tale Of Two Cities. Very apropos, considering what happened to Monsieur the Marquis.

    @Matt McIrvin:

    As to gold…I’m far from being a posturing tough guy, but if I had any long term assets to diversify I might well be tempted to buy some gold and bury it in the back yard. At least it wouldn’t get stolen by politically connected looters…

  69. 69.

    Haydnseek

    @hoppipolla: Man, your mom must have been really hip to be a Bob and Ray fan. I didn’t know who they were until I discovered them in my older cousins collection of Mad magazines…getting old IS weird. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that our generation used up most of the fun…It’s a renewable resource, but I think we got the quality stuff.

  70. 70.

    Haydnseek

    @hoppipolla: My morning mantra–nothing hurts, everything works! I’m pushing 61, but not very fast. A heartfelt good night to you, as well.

  72. 72.

    Narcissus

    I can’t tell you how it makes me feel that our monetary polciy is dictated by a speech a minor character gives from a 70 year old third-rate potboiler.

  74. 74.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @hoppipolla: Ah, but what if you remember both Bob and Ray and Firesign? What does that say about you? And the Marx Brothers and Monty Python? And George Carlin? And Lewis Black?

    Maybe that you’re old and you like to laugh? I hope my kids dig back into the archives.

  75. 75.

    AA+ Bonds

    soon enough the EXTREME LEFT will want no gold standard

    See, though, we’re already there, in the land of sanity, waiting for y’all to join us

    There are any number of possible situations where the “far left” isn’t where sanity rests

    But today ain’t that day

  78. 78.

    Berial

    Krugman has been talking about the whole ‘gold standard’ thing for awhile now. Here’s his latest about it. Hint, he’s agin’ it.

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