The 2012 Reagan Library Republican Presidential Debate

[enterthemadness]

I could tie tiny sacks of gold/silver to my belt and make jokes lol. ^_^

 

[DACrowe]

I didn't watch the debates last night...I would have been sick I'm sure if I did. Instead, I wisely waited for the highlights.

Just when I think Perry can beat Obama, he opens his mouth again and he reminds me why he is a joke of a candidate. He wants to run on Social Security being a Ponzi Scheme in need of busting? I'd welcome him in the general!

But I think the rest of the GOP saw that and Romney's numbers should rise in the coming weeks.

 

[DACrowe]

I didn't watch the debates last night...I would have been sick I'm sure if I did. Instead, I wisely waited for the highlights.

Just when I think Perry can beat Obama, he opens his mouth again and he reminds me why he is a joke of a candidate. He wants to run on Social Security being a Ponzi Scheme in need of busting? I'd welcome him in the general!

But I think the rest of the GOP saw that and Romney's numbers should rise in the coming weeks.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I didn't watch the debates last night...I would have been sick I'm sure if I did. Instead, I wisely waited for the highlights.

Just when I think Perry can beat Obama, he opens his mouth again and he reminds me why he is a joke of a candidate. He wants to run on Social Security being a Ponzi Scheme in need of busting? I'd welcome him in the general!

But I think the rest of the GOP saw that and Romney's numbers should rise in the coming weeks.

It's not so much that Romney's numbers should rise nationally in the coming weeks, but more along the lines that Romney has solidified his victory in Florida, which would give him the momentum he needs to win elsewhere afterwards. Perry also hurt himself in states that have open primaries like South Carolina.

I wouldn't count him out overall though. Perry showed that he did have some weaknesses (like how he was unable to debate on health care, foreign policy, and of course the Social Security ponzi scheme), but he did a good job in rally up his base and effectively killing Michelle Bachmann's chances for the nomination. He showed that he has convictions and will stand behind them as opposed to back tracking, flip flopping, or saying that he was misstated and voters will like that. And when it came to defending his economic record, he did a good job at that.

The big winner though was Mitt Romney. He looked calm and Presidential, from previous experience of 2008. He benefits this time around on the fact that the only candidate that hates him is Rick Perry as opposed to last time where Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Fred Thompson hated him and Rudy Giuliani supported his friend McCain and they all ganged up on him. He was able to defend his economic record quite well. He won't be a Tea Party favorite, but he at least showed off his conservative credentials and will be an acceptable candidate in 2012. And he answered the questions very well as well in most categories. I am now firmly convinced that if Romney wins the nomination, he is guaranteed to win the general election. Barack Obama can beat Rick Perry, but he will not beat Mitt Romney.

 

[yoshimura]

He even thinks the government doesn't have the constitutional authority to print and regulate paper monies.

It's because the government really doesn't have the constitutional authority to print and regulate paper monies.

The US dollar used to be backed by a gold standard. You could redeem your paper for gold or silver. Prices were actually going down 1-2% a year.

A forced monopoly of paper fiat monies without a gold or hard asset backing = endless spending, debt, endless wars, etc.

That is crazy. And it's going to be coming to a halt with unbearable inflation for the American people. Only 40 years after completely being delinked from gold, the currency fails. All history of paper fiat money shows that it only lasts, on average, 27 years. Gold and silver have kept their value for 5000+ years. The marketplace (people) recognize this. It's just that a forced monopoly on currency, like the current paper money, gives ultimate control to whomever is in power.

This lil video shows the … "The Short, Unhappy Lives of Fiat Currencies":
[YT]http://youtu.be/gY1EcCUu5nw[/YT]

 

[terry78]

Rick Perry the Platypus.

 

[chaseter]

It's because the government really doesn't have the constitutional authority to print and regulate paper monies.

The US dollar used to be backed by a gold standard. You could redeem your paper for gold or silver. Prices were actually going down 1-2% a year.

A forced monopoly of paper fiat monies without a gold or hard asset backing = endless spending, debt, endless wars, etc.

That is crazy. And it's going to be coming to a halt with unbearable inflation for the American people. Only 40 years after completely being delinked from gold, the currency fails. All history of paper fiat money shows that it only lasts, on average, 27 years. Gold and silver have kept their value for 5000+ years. The marketplace (people) recognize this. It's just that a forced monopoly on currency, like the current paper money, gives ultimate control to whomever is in power.

This lil video shows the … "The Short, Unhappy Lives of Fiat Currencies":
[YT]http://youtu.be/gY1EcCUu5nw[/YT]

The gold standard during a recession is stupid. People would be hoarding it. They would be taking money out of the economy. It's why the US has suspended the gold standard many times in our history, WWI for example. During a recession, money needs to be pumped into the economy. Why do you think The Great Depression was so great? The gold standard contributed to The Great Depression.

"The Role of the International Gold Standard in Propagating the Great Depression," published in Contemporary Policy Issues in 1988, that counting on a gold standard to enforce monetary and fiscal discipline in an environment in which speculators had great doubts about governments' ability to adhere to that discipline was a recipe for disaster. International capital flows became more erratic, not less, as doubts were raised about whether first the pound would be devalued and then the dollar. Britain gave in to the speculative attacks and abandoned gold in 1931, whereas the U.S. toughed it out by deliberately raising interest rates in 1931 at a time when the economy was already near free fall.

Because of this uncertainty, there was a big increase in demand for gold, the one safe asset in this setting, which meant the relative price of gold must rise. If everybody is trying to hoard more gold, you're going to have to pay more potatoes to get an ounce of gold. Since the U.S. insisted on holding the dollar price of gold fixed, this meant that the dollar price of potatoes had to fall. The longer a country stayed on the gold standard, the more overall deflation it experienced. Many of us are persuaded that this deflation greatly added to the economic difficulties of those countries that insisted on sticking with a fixed value of their currency in terms of gold.

"The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An International Comparison" published in 1991 (NBER working paper version here), noted that 13 other countries besides the U.K. had decided to abandon their currencies' gold parity in 1931. Bernanke and James' data for the average growth rate of industrial production for these countries (plotted in the top panel above) was positive in every year from 1932 on. Countries that stayed on gold, by contrast, experienced an average output decline of 15% in 1932. The U.S. abandoned gold in 1933, after which its dramatic recovery immediately began. The same happened after Italy dropped the gold standard in 1934, and for Belgium when it went off in 1935. On the other hand, the three countries that stuck with gold through 1936 (France, Netherlands, and Poland) saw a 6% drop in industrial production in 1935, while the rest of the world was experiencing solid growth.

A gold standard only works when everybody believes in the overall fiscal and monetary responsibility of the major world governments and the relative price of gold is fairly stable. And yet a lack of such faith was the precise reason the world returned to gold in the late 1920's and the reason many argue for a return to gold today. Saying you're on a gold standard does not suddenly make you credible. But it does set you up for some ferocious problems if people still doubt whether you've set your house in order.

To curb inflation, after a recession the government should raise taxes and take out some of that inflationary cash that they artificially pumped into the economy. That is how you curb inflation.

Going back to the gold standard now would be stupid. Also, Rome was on the gold standard.

 

[StorminNorman]

No, that is not what he said at the debate. He even thinks the government doesn't have the constitutional authority to print and regulate paper monies. Ron Paul wants us to carry around actual gold and silver coinage.

Did I say fed notes?

No, I said bank notes.

You go to your bank, you give them five dollars of gold, they give you five dollars of bank notes (dollar bills). You then buy a five dollar footlong. Subway takes your five dollar bank notes and deposits them in their bank. Their bank sends the bank notes to your bank and transfers the gold.

 

[yoshimura]

WWI for example.

Governments go off the gold standard during wars like the Civil War and WWI because they can just print more money to create their war machine. If governments did not have a monopoly on currency and were backed by a gold standard, there could not be a big scale war with hundreds of thousands of deaths.

During a recession, money needs to be pumped into the economy.

Money definitely should not be pumped into an economy. What needs to happen is for mal-investments to be liquidated and productivity needs to rise. The USSR pumped plenty of money into their economy, everyone had a job. The question is, how do they know how much money to pump if any at all? What will effect? How will they allocate resources? It's impossible to calculate. That's why you have to let the free market flourish.

Why do you think The Great Depression was so great?

Because the Federal Reserve created a bubble by increase the money supply. The depression turned "Great" because the Fed kept on inflating, setting interest rates, interfering with the market… they wouldn't let the market reallocate the mal-investments, much like today.

here's a propaganda film from that era promoting inflation:
[YT]http://youtu.be/JUvm9UgJBtg[/YT]

Rome…

The Roman empire forced their currency on all territories. They taxed and collected the gold coins with which they clipped, diluted to create more coins. That was their way of inflating the money supply. They did this to increase the size and scope of government and their war machine. Dishonest money and a forced monopoly never work.

 

[StorminNorman]

No, that is not what he said at the debate. He even thinks the government doesn't have the constitutional authority to print and regulate paper monies. Ron Paul wants us to carry around actual gold and silver coinage.

No. He wants no Fed notes, not Bank notes.

You have five dollars of gold. You don't want to carry around gold. You go to the bank and exchange it for five dollar bank notes. You use those bank notes at Subway to buy a five dollar footlong. They can either deposit the banknote into their account or exchange it with your bank for five dollars of gold.

The gold standard during a recession is stupid. People would be hoarding it. They would be taking money out of the economy. It's why the US has suspended the gold standard many times in our history, WWI for example. During a recession, money needs to be pumped into the economy. Why do you think The Great Depression was so great? The gold standard contributed to The Great Depression.


To curb inflation, after a recession the government should raise taxes and take out some of that inflationary cash that they artificially pumped into the economy. That is how you curb inflation.

Going back to the gold standard now would be stupid. Also, Rome was on the gold standard.

Dude, your getting your economic history from a monetarist (the people that advocate quantitative easing).

For one, recessions and depressions are caused by an artificial expansion of credit, which wouldn't be possible if we had a gold standard without a government banking monopoly (the recessions before the Fed were caused by various proto-Fed institutions, be it Hamilton's bank, the SBUS, Lincoln's National Currency Acts.) No boom, no bust, no recession.

But lets ignore that, because your still wrong.

For one, deflation itself isn't a bad thing durring a depression. In a depresison people lose jobs, wages go down - is it better for prices to rise or for prices to fall? (Look at the Depression of 1920-21 as an example where deflationary practices played a roll in a short, non-Great Depression).

Further, as economist Bob Murphy (since we might as well go with one who predicted 2008), points out in a response to Krugman trying to make the same point you are (with a chart showing the production of Japan, Britian, Germany, US and France):

[T]he 3rd country to go off gold (Japan) is ranked 1st in output, the 2nd country to go off gold (Britain) is ranked 2nd in output, and the 1st country to go off gold (Germany) is ranked 3rd in output. If we just looked at those three countries, we would conclude that "history shows" abandoning the gold standard was the way to cripple your economic recovery.

Money is only a medium for trade, that's all. It's not dollar bills, its not federal notes, it's whatever is perceived as being the commodity that is easiest to trade for goods. (You trade your labor for money so you can trade your money for another good.) If people in a depression decide that they need to "horde" (which is really just saving when people don't want you to save), then they are building their wealth to spend it later. (In a non government regulated economy, this would actually serve to naturally lower interest rates, which would encourage investment in long-term projects, but I digress.)

And I do love that you brought up Rome (which would have been irrelevant, even if you were right, because Romes problem were larger than just monetary policy), because they were guilty of debasing the currency too.

He then went further by proceeding to debase the coinage. The basic coinage of the Roman Empire to this time — we're speaking now about 211 AD — was the silver denarius introduced by Augustus at about 95 percent silver at the end of the 1st century BC. The denarius continued for the better part of two centuries as the basic medium of exchange in the empire.

By the time of Trajan in 117 AD, the denarius was only about 85 percent silver, down from Augustus's 95 percent. By the age of Marcus Aurelius, in 180, it was down to about 75 percent silver. In Septimius's time it had dropped to 60 percent, and Caracalla evened it off at 50/50.
Caracalla was assassinated in 217. There then followed an age that historians refer to as the Age of the Barrack Emperors, because throughout the 3rd century all the emperors were soldiers and all of them came to their power by military coups of one sort or another.

There were about 26 legitimate emperors in this century and only one of them died a natural death. The rest either died in battle or were assassinated, which was totally unprecedented in Roman history — with two exceptions: Nero, a suicide, and Caligula, assassinated earlier.
Caracalla had also debased the gold coinage. Under Augustus this circulated at 45 coins to a pound of gold. Caracalla made it 50 to a pound of gold. Within 20 years after him it was circulating at 72 to a pound of gold, reduced to 60 at the end of the century by Diocletian, only to be raised again to 72 by Constantine. So even the gold coinage was in fact inflated — debased.

But the real crisis came after Caracalla, between 258 and 275, in a period of intense civil war and foreign invasions. The emperors simply abandoned, for all practical purposes, a silver coinage. By 268 there was only 0.5 percent silver in the denarius.

(This is just a snip of a very good piece on the matter http://mises.org/daily/3663)

 

[Dr. Evil]

Makes up own caption:

Rick Perry scolds Ron Paul for even thinking about running for Governor of Texas.

Rick Perry: That job is mine and mine forever, even if I don't get the White House!

 

[DACrowe]

It's not so much that Romney's numbers should rise nationally in the coming weeks, but more along the lines that Romney has solidified his victory in Florida, which would give him the momentum he needs to win elsewhere afterwards. Perry also hurt himself in states that have open primaries like South Carolina.

I wouldn't count him out overall though. Perry showed that he did have some weaknesses (like how he was unable to debate on health care, foreign policy, and of course the Social Security ponzi scheme), but he did a good job in rally up his base and effectively killing Michelle Bachmann's chances for the nomination. He showed that he has convictions and will stand behind them as opposed to back tracking, flip flopping, or saying that he was misstated and voters will like that. And when it came to defending his economic record, he did a good job at that.

The big winner though was Mitt Romney. He looked calm and Presidential, from previous experience of 2008. He benefits this time around on the fact that the only candidate that hates him is Rick Perry as opposed to last time where Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Fred Thompson hated him and Rudy Giuliani supported his friend McCain and they all ganged up on him. He was able to defend his economic record quite well. He won't be a Tea Party favorite, but he at least showed off his conservative credentials and will be an acceptable candidate in 2012. And he answered the questions very well as well in most categories. I am now firmly convinced that if Romney wins the nomination, he is guaranteed to win the general election. Barack Obama can beat Rick Perry, but he will not beat Mitt Romney.

Romney looked presidential. And with the economy the way it is, that gives him serous power in the general election. Perry made Bush look like an intellectual (no easy feat) and then went after the most beloved New Deal-era policy that is still wildly popular. And he didn't do it in the insidious Frank Luntz/Karl Rove/Paul Ryan way where they pretend they're "saving" the program with pretty rhetoric when their actual goal is to dismantle it. No, he just straight up said what they all think--it is corrupt and unAmerican and is in need of dismantling. In short, he gave the game away to voters and voters are not going to respond well to that.

If Perry wins the nomination, I will breathe a sigh of relief. But there are enough smart people in the Republican Party that should see that. Then again, that's what Hillary supporters would say about Obama and then Obama supporters still got him the nomination (I voted for Obama btw, but don't tell Marx )

I still think Wednesday set the stage for Perry vs. Romney and Romney will come out bloodied, but, at least in the primary, victorious next year.