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Why Did Trump Win? Just Look At His Policy

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Published : November 06th, 2016
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Category : Gold and Silver

When you consider the writing of any academic economist, over the past century at least, you have to consider these factors. Usually, it is the most important thing. I've often compared the academic economists to the Catholic Church, and it is interesting that this academic economist does so too. Being a "creative" Catholic might be a career-booster -- the preferred path to a becoming a bishop. But, you have to remain a Catholic.

It is not just the high priests of academic dogma who like to be stroked. They too bend to the pressures exerted upon them -- pressures that come, in large part, from central banks themselves. Since "interpretations" of the Great Depression serve as the ultimate justification for floating fiat currencies today, and it is floating fiat currencies (instead of an automatic, nondiscretionary system like a gold standard or currency board) which gives central bankers their outsized status and influence, we should not be surprised to find that various "blame gold interpretations" fit quite well within central banks' present agenda.

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed’s thrall, the economists missed it, too.

“The Fed has a lock on the economics world,” says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. “There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong.”

Priceless: How the Federal Reserve Bought the Economics Profession

Probably it is a little incorrect to go into all this sort of thing, which doesn't really address the assertions on the table directly at all. But, having been involved in this sort of thing for a long time now, what I am often most concerned about is what are the motivations of the writer? From the motivations spring all the rest of the verbiage.

My motivation is to treat the gold standard as innocent until proven guilty. The reason for this is that, if the gold standard really "caused" the Great Depression, then it conceivably could do so again. As I think we have seen in detail by now, neither the Keynesians nor the Monetarists -- the two most popular "interpretations" over the past eighty years -- make any real claims that the gold standard was the "cause." There hasn't been much defense necessary, because there are no claims to begin with. We are actually in agreement.

I intended this to be something of a coda to our look into "monetary interpretations of the Great Depression", but I can tell already that it is going to get pretty involved. We will continue with this discussion soon.





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Nathan Lewis was formerly the chief international economist of a firm that provided investment research for institutions. He now works for an asset management company based in New York. Lewis has written for the Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, Japan Times, Pravda, and other publications. He has appeared on financial television in the United States, Japan, and the Middle East.
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