GOP to embrace gold in party platform

[Slimprofits]

I should point out that in 2008 the party platform was changed to acknowledge climate change and the need for global cooperation to curb it

I'm certain that you won't see that mentioned anywhere where this news is covered.

the Financial Times:

August 23, 2012 8:21 pm
Republicans to embrace gold in platform

By Robin Harding and Anna Fifield in Washington

The gold standard has returned to mainstream US politics for the first time in 30 years, with a “gold commission” set to become part of official Republican party policy.

Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.

[..]

The proposal is reminiscent of the Gold Commission created by former president Ronald Reagan in 1981, 10 years after Richard Nixon broke the link between gold and the dollar during the 1971 oil crisis. That commission ultimately supported the status quo.

[..]

A commission would have no power except to make recommendations, but Mr Fieler said it would provide a chance to educate politicians and the public about the merits of a return to gold. “We’re not going to go from a standing start to the gold standard,” he said.

[don]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

Another example of either party saying anything to anyone to 'get their vote'. Their cynicism may be as deep as the Mariana Trench - and that's not mentioning their mendacity, which is off the charts - but at least in public they're seldom sarcastic.

[shiny!]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

A commission would have no power except to make recommendations, but Mr Fieler said it would provide a chance to educate politicians and the public about the merits of a return to gold. “We’re not going to go from a standing start to the gold standard,” he said.

I'd rather see politicians educated about money creation, i.e. how money should be created by the Treasury, not by private banks. I'm willing to bet that the majority of politicians have no idea how the current system of a Central Bank creating money and loaning it to the government has the seeds of destruction built right into it.

Andrew Gause's The Secret World of Money should be required reading for every politician. Not that they care...

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.

A commission would have no power except to make recommendations, but Mr Fieler said it would provide a chance to educate politicians and the public about the merits of a return to gold. “We’re not going to go from a standing start to the gold standard,” he said.

Denninger has a piece out today where he dumps on gold and the gold standard.

[lektrode]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

Denninger has a piece out today where he dumps on gold and the gold standard.

well.. ??

[aaron]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

Time to buy

[seobook]

Re: GOP to embrace gold in party platform

Denninger has a piece out today where he dumps on gold and the gold standard.

I don't think he was entirely trashing the idea of having gold back currency, but more that if private banks have no legitimate/rational leverage limit (and have enough of a hold on the political process that all such suggested limits have Swiss cheese styled holes through them), then so long as they are able to create unbacked credit units (which spend exactly as cash) a gold standard won't prevent some forms of destructive bubbles from being created. And so long as those bubbles are allowed to be created then even before they blow up they still rob purchasing power from everyone not engaged in the same, and then those same 3rd parties get robbed once more during the clean up where government can "temporarily" suspend a gold standard & print, print, print to paper over the fraud of the banksters who funded their election campaigns.

He preaches "one Dollar of capital" as a concept where credit must be backed legitimately by corresponding assets or capital, with speculative institutions being separate from banks (and thus not tying government insurance and the capital of savers with 3rd party gambling), and assets traded on a mark to market basis nightly.

Here is a quote from KD's recent post:

the problem isn't either a metallic standard or a fiat currency. It's the ability to issue unbacked credit that is fungible and indistinguishable with money, granted to private commercial banks that then abuse that privilege to create monstrous amounts of leverage in the system.
Note carefully that the party's plans do not include any bar on such credit issuance. Without that there is no solution and there is also nothing to prevent the banksters from siphoning off your wealth -- nor, for that matter, anything to prevent the governing from levying an effective unlimited tax by simply engaging in deficit spending.

edit / cough: looks like KD did a follow up comment explaining a bit more behind why he dislikes the gold standard

No it's not. It simply hands control of the rug being pulled out from under you to the people who own the gold mines. Which, incidentally, are fewer in number and less accountable to the public than governments are, and worse, are almost all outside of OUR country, with many of them in places that are LITERALLY ruled by a bunch of thugs with guns.

No thank you.

[Slimprofits]

Re: GOP negotiating with NAR on mortgage interest deduction

Today's issue of American Banker says that the National Association of Realtors has people at the GOP convention "defending" the deduction.

This article from the Wall seems to say there won't be a one-off vote to eliminate the deduction, that it will only happen as part of a larger tax reform package.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/08/21/gop-in-compromise-on-mortgage-interest-deduction/

Allies of the real-estate industry on Tuesday succeeded in adding compromise language to the GOP platform supporting the mortgage-interest tax deduction, a day after they lost a fight on the issue.

The overnight turnaround on the issue reflects the real-estate industry’s continued lobbying clout – and the mortgage deduction’s ongoing curb appeal for voters – as Congress begins the process of streamlining the U.S. tax code.

The vote also underscores Republicans’ interest in the mortgage deduction, at a time when Democrats charge that Mitt Romney’s tax-overhaul plans will raise taxes on middle-class families by scaling back lots of deductions such as the mortgage break – a charge the Romney camp rejects. The Romney campaign says his tax breaks could be offset through spending cuts or other means.

The new compromise language says the Republican Party strongly supports a tax-code rewrite, but in the event that Congress fails to accomplish it, “we must preserve the mortgage interest deduction.”

Any comprehensive rewrite of the tax system is expected to involve significant changes in the dozens of tax deductions and credits that now litter the code. The mortgage-interest deduction is among the biggest of all tax breaks. It’s expected to cost the government $84 billion in 2012.

[Slimprofits]

Re: GOP negotiating with NAR on mortgage interest deduction

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...218788846.html

In the ferment within today's Republican Party, the gold standard has become almost the centrist position. On the left would be those who favor a system of discretionary activism in which brilliant technocrats, such as Ben Bernanke at the Fed, use their judgment in setting interest rates. A bit to their right would be advocates of a rule, such as John Taylor's rule linking interest rates to various conditions, or one that requires the Fed to target the price of gold but stops short of defining the dollar in terms of specie.


In the center would be advocates of a classical gold standard, in which a dollar is defined as a fixed amount of gold. These include, among others, Mr. Lehrman, James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, publisher Steve Forbes, economist Judy Shelton, and Sean Fieler of the American Principles Project.

A bit further to the right would be partisans of the Austrian school of economics, including Rep. Paul. He advocates less for a gold standard than for an idea of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel laureate who came to favor what he called the denationalization of money and a system centered on private coinage and currency that would compete with government-issued money. Further right are purists such as the radical constitutionalist Edwin Vieira Jr., who would simply price things in weights of gold or silver.


[..]

This is the context in which Mr. Romney last week moved so pointedly to distance himself from a suggestion by one of his advisers, Glenn Hubbard, that Mr. Bernanke should be considered for another term. Mr. Romney made clear that he would be looking for a new Fed chairman.