What If We Never Left The Gold-Standard? Part I

We live in an insane world. This isn’t an assertion, merely an obvious statement of fact. My own commentaries have dubbed this insane world “the Wonderland Matrix”. The Corporate media has deviously given it the euphemism “the New Normal”.

Neither “world” makes any sense whatsoever. The essential difference between the Wonderland Matrix and the New Normal is that the analysis which accompanies my work on the Wonderland Matrix provides us with the only explanation of why we live in a world which makes no sense. Conversely, the New Normal simply/inanely postulates the totally discredited cliché that “this time it’s different”.

In both the Wonderland Matrix and New Normal we have total perversity; black is “white”, down is “up”, and bad is “good”. In the New Normal; the fiction-writers of the mainstream media tell us that the U.S. economy is once again the envy of the world, thanks to what they call a 5+ year “economic recovery”, which is already much longer than any normal economic recovery (back when the world was sane).

The fiction-writers tell us that lots and lots of “new jobs” have been created during this (supposed) economic recovery, more than 5 million, to be precise. Yet the percentage of Americans who actually have jobs has fallen from 66% to 63.5%, and there haven’t been so few Americans working in that economy (on a percentage basis) in more than thirty years. It makes no sense.

The U.S. cars-and-highways economy is notorious for being the most rapacious gasoline-guzzler the world has ever seen. Yet official U.S. “gasoline consumption” numbers from the U.S. government report the U.S. economy is now only consuming 1/3^rd as much gasoline as when this “recovery” began. It makes no sense. One could go on and on and on (as has been done in previous commentaries), but the (real) picture is clear: a world of insanity.

In general terms, the mission of writers such as myself is then also clear: to attempt to restore some degree of sanity to the world in which readers live. On a practical basis, my own strategy has been consistent since first beginning to publish economics-based commentaries: expose/debunk the Wonderland Matrix, and provide readers with analytical glimpses of what a “sane” world should look like – in many cases by simply reminding people of what our own “world” did look like, when it used to be sane.

In this respect, my “mission” has recently been aided by a question from an inquisitive reader: what if we had never left the gold standard? Exploring hypothetical scenarios is often a trivial (if not tedious) exercise, but not when we hypothesize sanity in the world. In that case; clearly the exercise is elevated to providing a realistic (if not superior) alternative to the current insanity.

The fiction-writers (and the “expert” economists who prostitute themselves on their behalf) tell us that a return to a true gold standard is absolutely impossible. Why? Because it would require our governments to manage our economies in a responsible and sustainable manner.

In the New Normal, this is not possible. It’s only “possible” for our (corrupt) governments to manage our economies in a (totally) reckless and (hopelessly) unsustainable manner, which has now brought every major Western economy to the literal brink of inevitable bankruptcy.

Clearly leaving the gold standard has not brought us the economic “nirvana” promised by the bankers (and their expert economists). Ceasing to manage our economies in a responsible/sustainable manner, and choosing to manage our economies in a reckless/unsustainable manner for the last forty years has rendered all of these economies insolvent. Who could have predicted that? Certainly not the economists.