>> ^jwray:
The point is that gold has insufficient actual USES to fall back on as a basis for its high value.

It doesn't have to be useful for consumption, it is useful as money. Do you understand what money is and why it's an important good in a modern economy. Do you understand that people can demand and want something for this purpose rather than to consume it or play with it? Do you understand that that's exactly what happened with gold when people were left to their own devices?

>> ^jwray:
The price of gold is subject to the volatile whims of the people, and has fluctuated a great deal over the last 100 years.

The value of the dollar relative to other currencies has fallen 70% in the last ten years, and 300% relative to gold. That's not volatile? See, your mistake is you're looking at the value relationship in the wrong way. You see the dollar maintaining its value and everything else flailing wildly against it. Instead, the dollar and people's confidence in it is what's flailing wildly. Look at a chart comparing gold to oil (both priced in dollars) the last thirty years - almost completely flat. If gold was money, gas prices would have gone nowhere.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/saville/may022006.html

Also interesting to note from this chart is what the price for both was in ~1971. Guess what happened in 1971 that caused the chart to start moving up for thirty years? Nixon scratched the bretton woods semi-gold standard, removing the last link of the dollar to gold. A nation that built its country on gold and became the reserve currency of the world on gold, inflated heavily in the 60s to finance pointless activities like Vietnam, The War on Poverty, the Great Society. It got to a point where gold reserves were far less than the debt owed to foreigners by 1971, the equivalent of an fractional reserve bank run. Those foreigners began calling in the debt, and rather than stop inflating and cutting a deal, Nixon got on a podium and broke the contract because it wasn't in "our best interest." Just like that. It later became permanent. Full fiat. Now there was NOTHING backing the dollar but confidence in its scarcity which is controlled by government.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRzr1QU6K1o

We currently lie about inflation and pay foreigners back in devalued dollars, probably more devalued than the interest return on those bonds, but the CPI hides it with hedonics adjustment, substitution, and geometric weighting added during the Clinton years. The bond market is the last major bubble in the U.S. economy.

But since we libertarians understand human behavior and the nature of government, it meant inevitable hyperinflationary collapse. Because like every other fiat currency in history, it will be debased by its spendthrift government and the citizens will stand by and let it happen because they are exactly like you: ignorant of economics and eternally trustful of government. That's why our forefathers tried to illegalize fiat in the constitution after they saw the continental dollar hyperinflated.

http://www.safehaven.com/article-9534.htm

>> ^jwray:
Platinum, Iridium, and Silver would work just as well as gold. But if a great depression comes I would rather have a stockpile of wheat than a stockpile of gold.

How long is that wheat going to last before spoiling? Where are you going to store it? How are you going to carry it around and pay people with it? What if someone already has enough wheat and they want berries, and the guy who has berries doesn't want wheat either, he wants leather? You're reducing yourself to barter. You can't run a modern economy that way.

>> ^jwray:
Under the current federal reserve system, if they set interest rates properly and avoid excess printing, inflation can be kept below 2%. Theoretically, if the fiat money system is done properly, it can be more stable in value than a gold-backed currency.

Welcome to today's powerful neo-Keynesian economic circles. Centralized control curriculums, a sexy interventionist theory financed by the benefactors of inflation, overrides history, human behavior, and all rational skepticism. The benevolent dictator argument, in its truest form. The fallacy that because its possible to have a benevolent dictator more efficient than any system that divides powers and makes it impossible for one man to destroy a country, that we should institute that system. No different than the Federal Reserve, in my opinion. They are THE ROOT CAUSE of most of our problems today. Right down to health care costs, another victim of inflation and HMO legislation, which the socialists are again trying to blame the free market on to build up more socialism. It all comes back to what system preserves wealth, and this ain't it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYZM58dulPE

>> ^jwray:
The Euro is doing just fine with an inflation rate of 1.8%.

Measured by whom, and for how long? We could have said the same thing years ago. Will hyperinflation occur under you or your children or your grandchildren? Who knows, right? All you know is it's happened before in Europe, now it's just more centralized so all countries will be affected when it happens. Congrats.

Do you understand why we're fucked now? Why it's hopeless, why I bury my head every time someone calls Ron Paul a kook. You are just one of 200 million people I have to convince in this country, and it took me five hours with you and I probably still didn't make a dent.

In fact, here's the hilarious trickery of Keynesian economics. China holds over 1 trillion U.S. dollars in their reserves. That's right, we borrow from them, they're the largest creditor nation and we're the largest debtor (we actually used to be the largest creditor, that's how far we've fallen). But the reason they do it: they falsely believe that Americans consuming their products is driving their economy. In the beginning, this was true because they did have a legitimately weak currency relative to ours. But now things are different. They're INTENTIONALLY debasing their money to keep trying to grow this way even though they don't need to: currency appreciation would allow them to consume their own products without us. So they are intentionally devaluing their currency by inflating and buying up our bonds, on a grand scale, essentially paying Americans to consume their exports even though they can only afford them because of these payments. Insanity! If they ever figured this out, the bond bubble will pop. Even the ECB is not hiking rates when they should be. The world has been fooled into thinking that the American consumer is responsible for all their growth and is fearful of letting it collapse. Consumption over production, putting the cart before the horse, the mainstay of Keynesian thinking.

QM, this poll refutes the first half of your post:

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=252

Uh, that "poll" doesn't even cover the Clinton years.

And either way, it rightfully illustrates wrong-headed thinking.

Either B. Clinton was/is a rockstar who could do no wrong (according to the liberal mainstream media) in the eyes of the world, in which case world opinion of the USA was higher at the cost of being attacked repeatedly by emboldened terrorists.......OR Slick was as "despised" as Bush supposedly is now, in which case the liberal can't-we-all-just-get-along milktoast claptrap of Clinton was as soundly rejected by jihadidiots as promises of destruction.

In other words, if they don't accept peace, by blowing them to pieces we lose nothing except the risk of future terrorist attacks.

And Richard Clarke's book refutes the second half of your post.

If you want to stand by Clinton's record of failure in dealing with threats to national security as the best he could do, that's your right.

For the survival-minded, Obama is not a risk worth taking.

This is nothing but a string of platitudes.

*Every* Presidential election is about this nonsense meme of "change".

Bush Jr. was the "change" candidate offering a post-partisan way out of the manufactured bleak nightmare of the Bill Clinton years. Reagan was the "change" candidate to take us away from the manufactured bleak nightmare of the Carter years. And Obama (well, in this clip it's Edwards) is the "change" candidate to get us out of the actual nightmare of the Bush Jr. catastrophe.

"Change" is nonsense. Yes, a lot of us would like to see a whole lot of change here in the states, but to think that any one of these people would offer anything substantial one needs to know nothing about our body politic. Change doesn't happen in huge brush strokes (ok, maybe bad things can), but rather through incremental policy shifts.

Am not at all surprised she won Texas and Ohio, these states are very conservative and far more reluctant to vote for someone like Obama. I read an interesting analysis that stated that the more a voter knows about the campaigns the more willing he is to vote for Obama over Hillary, the vice versa holds true as well.

Clinton seems safe, besides the Lewinsky scandal most folks have a positive impression of Clinton years, no thanks to the economy boom that just happened to occur then.

I personally dislike the Clintons, they play just as dirty as the republicans, Clinton just could lie to you better then Bush can. This is the same person who went ahead and bombed Serbia bypassing the UN. Which is no better then Bush.

Purely on policy stances Obama and Clinton do not differ much at all, what we are voting for is character now. Compare how Obama handles himself and how Clinton does - the weeping tears stunt that somehow snowballed into a feminist voting block, the smear attacks such as the plagiarism thing against Obama. In this regard I admire the way Obama has conducted himself so far, his ability to create immense feelings of hope and change through rhetoric is especially admirably, even when he doesn't really say anything specific.

Between both of them however they don't really signal too much of a radical change from the Bush whitehouse, both candidates promise to reduce and not withdraw forces from Iraq. Both will probably support occupation status the likes of South Korea. Both are pro-Isreali candidates which would mean cooperation with Iran and Syria is probably out of the question. Both I believe will be middle of the road and centrist, nothing radical will happen, unlike Kunnich, Gravel or Paul.

Obama still has a numerical advantage on the number of delegates I believe, so it's not over yet. The magical unity pony might still make it.