“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
Alan Greenspan – 1966
“Today, going back on to the gold standard would be perceived as an act of desperation. But if the gold standard were in place today, we would not have reached the situation in which we now find ourselves. There is a widespread view that the 19th Century gold standard didn’t work. I think that’s like wearing the wrong size shoes and saying the shoes are uncomfortable! It wasn’t the gold standard that failed; it was politics.
We would never have reached this position of extreme indebtedness were we on the gold standard, because the gold standard is a way of ensuring that fiscal policy never gets out of line.”
Alan Greenspan – 2017
Seems like another who sold his soul for money , position and power.Then Alan Greenspan became just another liar.
What he is basically saying is that he had no real power even when he was head of the central bank. So who, or what, was controlling him? It is not an easy thing to wrap one’s head around. The closer one gets to this vortex/nexus of power, the more irrational they act. He is just one of many who sound significantly more rational both before and after being in the nexus. What the hell is happening to people in there?
“So who, or what, was controlling him?”: Soros & the Deep One World Government.
I’d suggest Soros and company are just tools of another more elusive power that is behind them and using them for it’s purposes.
Interesting thought, and ever more scary! Answer is the: Space Aliens….really, seriously!
Here is another one:
If everyone who has $$ invested in and IRA or 401k that they control, and were to start selling now, it would cause the market algorithms to join the heard and sell, forcing a panic in the market, and an automatic stop after 10% losses, on a daily basis.
boom, confidence has left the building.
I did not know that he (Greenspan) was capable of telling the truth…once some time ago. THEY must have gotten to him.
Back in the day as an Ayn Rand sycophant she named him The Undertaker. Fitting, as it turns out, that he was to oversee the death of the American dream. It’s one thing to have some academic dipshit like Yellen who actually believes in Keynesian snake oil leading us down the road to economic hell. This prick knew he was peddling debt and destruction from day one.
Russia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, and a couple others all went belly up in his Age of Turbulence. We are still laboring under the invoice. I am unaware of anyone who did more to privatize profit and socialize loss than this wanker.
Sounds like Al wishes he owned more gold. Maybe Mrs. Andrea Greenspan is spending all his currency.