Gold and Conservatives

"Within the American conservative movement, opponents of the gold standard--any form of gold standard--have always dominated the leadership. Newcomers may be unaware of this. ... Debates are usually limited to whether the FED is wise in holding to, or changing, the federal funds rate. Few readers of the '[WSJ]' or viewers of CNBC could tell you exactly what the federal funds rate is, why it is important, or how the [Fed] controls it. ... No one raises the fundamental issue of why and how it posses the legal authority to set the federal funds rate, enforce banking rules, and control the money supply--sort of. No one argues that the [Fed] is the most powerful private agency that is covered by a veneeer of public accountability. ... Ron Paul for the first time in American history made the [Fed] an issue in a Presidential campaign. He called for the re-establishment of the gold standard. ... The early years of the Great Depression were a time of monetary deflation. ... One economist who predicted this was Ludwig von Mises. he warned in the late 1920's about the coming contraction. He was opposed by an American economist, Irving Fisher of Yale, who announced a plateau for the American stock market in September 1929. ... Mises argued that the gold standard has arisen as a market phenomenon becasue gold is the most marketable commodity. ... In sharp contrast, Fisher in Chapter XII dismissed the gold standard as an historical accident. he said the gold standard would be difficult to dislodge, but someday people would abandon it. Why? Because gold 'is a substance, of which the supply is excessive.' The most famous advocate of Fisher's monetary theory was Milton Friedman. Through Friedman, the academic free market economics community became committed to fiat money after 1950. Friedman was the dominant free market spokesman after 1960. He held a position at the University of Chicago There was not a single gold standard proponent in the economics department in 1950 or later. ... Critics of the FED have long been segregated out of the movement by the leadership. ... Only in the last decade have pro-gold standard economists appeared on the scene through http://www.mises.org/. ... Friedman viewed gold as just another commodity. ... in 1986 ... [Freidman] admitted that his advocacy of a fixed rules for the expansion of central bank-created money had been a waste of time. Such restraint was not in the self-interest of central-banking officals. ... The [Fed] has been the problem ever since 1914", Gary North at Lew Rockwell, 25 February 2010, link:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north817.html.

Chicago had no gold standard advocates when I was there in the early 1970s. If I recollect correctly, Uncle Miltie's gestalt was when he realized the Fed must lie to the public to influence the economy.