Record Dow Jones Over 37,000

[Briar Lee]

As I recall, the argument Will Rogers made went something like this, "Buy land. God ain't making any more of it."

Rogers said that in the Roaring Twenties.

All under a gold standard, my great grandfather paid $5 an acre for 300 acres in 1876 and lived until 1920, when he died from the lingering effects of the 1918 influenza that killed his wife,

He had five children.

The fair market value of the land was estimated in 1920 to be a hundred dollars an acre, under a gold standard.

They all felt sorry for Elmer, who had already been given a house on 60 acres.

So Elmer had to only pay $4,000, or $66.67 an acre for his sixty. They let him have the house. My grandfather refused his share. The other three got $1.333 each from Elmer.

In 1936 Elmer sold out to his sister Eva for $3.50 an acre and she was the only bidder.

My father share cropped Elmer’s 60 until 1944 when he’d earned $210 to buy it and his aunt demanded $15 an acre, $900, which he paid. His mother went after Eva with a gun, but was stopped a short way before she reached Eva’s mansion.

Land is worth what it will produce.

If there are no buyers for what it will produce it’s not worth much of anything.

 

[Piping Abe]

I wrote something then deleted it. Its like talking to a guy who owns nothing but Lee and Marxman pipes

 

[Briar Lee]

I wrote something then deleted it. Its like talking to a guy who owns nothing but Lee and Marxman pipes

Don’t forget all my Kaywoodies, Lorenzos, Nordings, Grabows and Carey’s.

What makes America great is we debate issues.

The people that want a gold standard want what’s best for America.

We had a “sort of, kinda like” a gold standard in my memory.

Whatever else one might accuse Richard Nixon of, he was a loyal American.

I watched this on August 15, 1971 when I was 13 years old.

What America had was not a real, true gold standard. The Federal Reserve supported the price of gold at $35.

When gold fell below $35 the Fed bought. The Fed would sell gold at $35 to all government (not private) buyers, so long as we had gold to sell.

The problem was France, especially, was draining our gold reserves. They’d take $35 of account credit dollars and demand gold.

Nixon stopped that.

France then abandoned gold a couple of years later. They didn’t want their gold reserves drained.

As I get older the more I appreciate my school teachers at Humansville who discussed the pros and cons of the “Nixon Shock” in real time in the fall of 1971.

Mr. Costello was for gold and Mr. Baker against.

And they remained best of friends.

 

[Piping Abe]

Don’t forget all my Kaywoodies, Lorenzos, Nordings, Grabows and Carey’s.

What makes America great is we debate issues.

The people that want a gold standard want what’s best for America.

We had a “sort of, kinda like” a gold standard in my memory.

Whatever else one might accuse Richard Nixon of, he was a loyal American.

I watched this on August 15, 1971 when I was 13 years old.

What America had was not a real, true gold standard. The Federal Reserve supported the price of gold at $35.

When gold fell below $35 the Fed bought. The Fed would sell gold at $35 to all buyers, so long as we had gold to sell.

The problem was France, especially, was draining our gold reserves. They’d take $35 of account credit dollars and demand gold.

Nixon stopped that.

France then abandoned gold a couple of years later. They didn’t want their gold reserves drained.

As I get older the more I appreciate my school teachers at Humansville who discussed the pros and cons of the “Nixon Shock” in real time in the fall of 1971.

Mr. Costello was for gold and Mr. Baker against.

And they remained best of friends.

I appreciate you not taking offense to my comment. It’s all in good fun. It’s not everyday that we have discussions about the gold standard in our lives. Very engaging.

 

[Briar Lee]

I appreciate you not taking offense to my comment. It’s all in good fun. It’s not everyday that we have discussions about the gold standard in our lives. Very engaging.

Mr. Costello was a widower and he and another teacher, Mrs. Griffin, who was a widow, were an item. We all knew it and he was sort of like Matt Dillon to her Miss Kitty. I think he finally married her, but not until he was dying of cancer.

Mr. Baker was a young, bright as hell, new teacher who liked Miss Franka, who was a little older than he was but she was as sharp as any anchor babe on the six o’clock news.

The men would debate in front of us kids rooted on by their girlfriends who’d get sort of mad at each other, and it was beyond a hoot to watch.

One thing Costello and Baker agreed on concerning the Nixon Shock.

That 90 day wage price freeze was scary.

If France couldn’t buy the gold in Fort Knox for $35 an ounce that didn’t really impact us very much, at least not immediately.

But can you even imagine today if a president announced all wages and prices frozen?

The government comes with badges and guns to enforce things like a wage price freeze. They don’t ask pretty, please.

And all the while the Vietnam War was on the news every night.

We think our problems are new.

There were problems, in 1971 too.

 

[brian64]

An important viewpoint to consider...make of it what you will. Think it's all nonsense? Fine...feel free to ignore...time will tell.

The Great Taking

And free book:

The Great Taking

thegreattaking.com

 

[Briar Lee]

An important viewpoint to consider...make of it what you will. Think it's all nonsense? Fine...feel free to ignore...time will tell.

The Great Taking

And free book:

The Great Taking

thegreattaking.com

95 years later and economists argue over what caused the Great Depression.

A conservative was President.

We had the real gold standard in force, and in full effect

Instead of welfare, social security and all entitlement programs the counties maintained poor farms and the churches ran charitable aid societies.

We were paying down the small national debt, with a yearly surplus

Congress had cut taxes several times during the twenties

There’d been a brief recession in the early twenties but the last severe depression had been 1907.


When we read their newspapers they didn’t really believe they were in a Depression in 1930.

In 1931 they thought prosperity was just around the corner.

By 1932 even Hoover was throwing money at it. Hoover began almost every federal bureaucracy Roosevelt used to pour money with a fire hose instead of a garden hose.

In March 1933 when Roosevelt was sworn in the American economy was half of 1929, and falling.

Ever look up and see a mass of swirling black birds in the sky, where they make a long, black column? They’ll twist and turn and go every which way,,,,,in unison.

The American people by general consent had refused to buy anything but necessities for three and a half years.

Why the people decided to start buying things again in spring 1933 is a mystery too, but they did.

Yet in 1937 the people stopped spending again, not for long, but enough to cause a 33% plunge in economic output. Then in 1938 they began to buy things again.

When you see some younger geezer my age in charge of things, they grew up blanketed with Great Depression stories from their grandparents and parents.

But since I can remember in my lifetime, the recessions of the first two oil shocks in 1974 and 1980 and the Great Recession of 2008 were scary, real, and The last Covid 19 Recession was masked by enormous government spending, and truly was a black swan, unique event.

But Chairman Powell has shifted his foot off the brake pedal and seems poised to touch the loud pedal.

We may argue and debate over it, but it’s far better the independent Fed do fiscal policy than geezers in government like me.

No elected politician of either party would ever raise interest rates.

They’d open the treasury every election year.

All in all, let’s leave well enough alone, shall we?

We might smack the wall if we don’t.