May links 2

Conservative Supreme Court prunes worker rights. I appreciate both sides of this argument in general, but I think this isn't a good ruling. If we want a strong middle class in this country, we need support for workers. That's how we got the middle class.

Shootings. An account of what the school shooter from Santa Fe, TX said and did while killing his victim. Not a vantage point we usually get. Some details of police actions. Young Texans will probably not being leading marches for changes in gun laws. Accounts from first responders to the Las Vegas shooting. There were a lot of first responders, and it was more like a military battle because the shooter was so well armed and prepared.

More on Russia. For reference. The fake ads that Russians put out. So many that they are condensed in zip files. I don't really want to look, but I know I should. Mueller apparently used a Russian oligarch for a sensitive mercy mission. Not scandalous. Background on an undercover FBI informant who tried to find out what was happening in the Trump campaign. Trey Gowdy, in his sometimes-straight-sometimes-hack way, says that the FBI use of an informant in the investigation was appropriate. Great background and historical perspective on Russia.

Memorial Day reflection. When war becomes mundane and most Americans become detached, wars can linger and not be resolved.

Sessions changed immigration enforcement. Revealing and fascinating article about how Jeff Sessions (the Attorney General) is changing immigration enforcement. Chilling, surprising.

Background on fentanyl. I have some knowledge of fentanyl, but this was instructive even to me.

Timeline on scandal. Trump friends Michael Cohen and Elliott Broidy were gathering a lot of money. At this point in the investigation, it may be a partial timeline, but it's already long.

Revealing more sexual harassment. University of Southern California is being sued over the behavior of one of its gynecologists. Surprise - complaints were ignored.

More on the gold standard. One of my pet peeves is people who dogmatically think that the gold standard is workable. Another revealing story about FDR and his odd relationship with the gold standard.

Well, then don't act like one. Lawyer claims he's not a racist after his non-racist rant went viral. And that kind of rant isn't popular in New York City, the home of large number of immigrants.

Image: thefirearmblog.com

April links 2

Red flag laws for guns. Florida passed one after the Parkland shootings. Vermont just did because they had a very close brush with a school shooter arrested as he was planning his shooting spree. Indiana has had one for a while due to random shootings in a neighborhood.

Also, here is a resource on studies of efficacy for certain policies about guns.

Comey's nasty book. I'm not a fan of Comey, who seems mealy-mouthed to me. However, he had enough backbone to stand up to Trump, which not everyone has. His new book seems to have a lot of filler, some of it being creepy. However, he does reveal a non-surprise: Trump trying to spin the Russian hacking.

US/French/British strike on Syria. Interesting detail. How they faked out the Russian/Syria air defenses. A broader discussion. The US isn't striking hard because it needs to have room to ramp up if Syria continues chemical warfare.

History lesson about the end of the gold standard. One of the important moments of history. However, the US hadn't really kept to the gold standard anyway. Fiat currency has its problems, but the gold standard was simpler impossible to make work.

$21 Trillion missing. A Russian shill wrote that the Pentagon had lost $21 trillion. This was just a shill, so he didn't have any real thought in his comment. Consider this: $21 trillion is a huge amount of money that might have worldwide implications. Just imagine the US having double its current debt, but nobody cares. I pointed this out to the shill. He lamely replied "Well, it's from Forbes."

I have to look into this some more, but I've got to clear those tabs off my browser. So here's the dump: Michigan, missing money, truth in accounting, more Michigan,  maybe some details, Reuters. I don't have a link to the Forbes article because it wasn't particularly readable.

Image: acephalous.typepad.com

Cross of Gold

One of the best things about living in the U.S. is the abundance of economic and political ideas. This is a diverse society of both ethnic groups and ideas, and I wouldn't change either of those. So I won't attack the existence of loony ideas, just their particular merits and demerits. I won't even throw the label "loony idea" around since that would antithetical to my belief that most political ideas have strong reasons behind them.

With that in mind, maybe I shouldn't consider a return to the gold standard a loony idea. It's one of tenets of Ron Paul's long campaign to return the US to the straight-and-narrow of the constitution or die trying. But the drive to reestablish the gold standard is a poster child for the blindness of adherents to the disadvantages and risks of an idea.

Here are the highlights for the advantages of the gold standard:

• Paper currency has no intrinsic value because it isn't gold and isn't convertible to gold.
• Governments, politicians, and central banks often cause massive inflation of the currency.
• A gold standard makes it impossible for politicians or a central bank to inflate currency. The value of our national currency can stay stable for decades or longer.
• A gold standard forces the government to behave soundly, to avoid budget or trade deficits, in order to preserve the country's gold store.
• If there's a gold standard, we can return to using gold coins, which have intrinsic value in the precious metal.

Here are some risks and disadvantages:

• The gold-based currencies are subject to attack by currency speculators. That's why there are no longer any gold-based currencies.
• A gold-based currency doesn't necessarily stop governments from misbehaving. Governments have been known to run deficits and ended up bankrupting their precious metal reserves.
• The gold standard favors one kind of wealth over all others. Gains in non-gold wealth (agriculture, housing, infrastructure, a varied economy) are devalued unless there is also significant growth in gold holdings. That was possible during the mining boom in the 1800's, but not likely now.
• The inflexibility of the gold standard can lead to deflation, which has much worse economic effects than slight inflation rate of 1-2%.
• The history of financial panics in the 19th century doesn't support the idea that the gold standard promotes economic stability.

When I look at these two lists, the disadvantages clearly seem the weightier side of the equation. I don't know how someone supports the gold standard unless they completely ignore the mountain of evidence against it. When supporters embrace the policy as a magic cure to vagaries of financial systems, they look more like an unquestioning cult than a reasonable political movement. No, Paulites, the gold standard will not be our salvation from ourselves.

Update 6/12/23. Blogger flagged this post as having virus-infested links. I removed the links I thought were the most questionable. They were to a Lew Rockwell site.