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Comment by danenania | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, being able to restate an argument you've called crazy is a "trap". Give me a break.

Seriously, the goal here is to have mature discussions. If you aren't even willing to back up your assertions, just don't post.

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Ok, "moving from fiat currency to gold-backed currency" is crazy. "Disbanding the federal reserve" is crazy. It would involve massively reducing the money supply and liquidity for the overall economy, and destroy the current counter-cyclical levers we have to lower/raise interests rates when we want to either stimulate the economy or cool down inflation. Take a look at the extreme boom/bust cycle from the late 19th century if you want to see what happens without those levers. There's a reason they went to fiat currency in the first place, and it wasn't, "I'm a liberal caricature and I want to do this to increase government control". It's because the gold standard wasn't adequate to the job. Let alone that there's no way to get from here to there in the modern world where the entire G20 has fiat currencies.

The gold standard is a position of "I don't care what's been proven to work in the real world or what's possible to actually accomplish, I care about what I find emotionally satisfying".

EDIT: Regarding civil discussions, you might consider chilling out on the ad hom attacks yourself. You've called me uninformed multiple times while misinterpreting my comments to mean something that I don't see any possible way to construe from what I said. Bringing Chinese actions from the 1950s and 60s into a discussion of "modern china's" propensity for militarism above, as if anyone would consider maoist China the same thing as the current regime, and implying that I had no idea such events happened.

Look, the Fed printing money doesn't "stimulate" anything except the balance sheets of its own member banks and their friends. It is functionally equivalent to counterfeiting on a mass scale. Why do you think counterfeiting is illegal? It gives the counterfeiter a (stolen) financial benefit, then dilutes the value of existing money. Anyone posting on a hacker forum should understand this basic functional relationship. It really isn't hard to grasp. Inflation doesn't create wealth. It transfers wealth. It's not very difficult to see which direction it's being transferred. Trying to stop this is not 'crazy'. It's common sense.

International food prices recently hit an all time high. Americans really need to wake up from their fantasies quick. Their incredible ignorance of how their leaders operate is costing the world a nearly unimaginable toll of suffering and death, and it's getting worse every day.

Lowering the interest rate is not equivalent to printing money. If you want to redefine terms, you can prove whatever you want to prove.

The Federal Reserve has responsibility for both interest rates and creation of money (check out the Wikipedia page). I believe the parent was referring to the Fed increasing M0, the base money supply. Interesting things have been happening to M0 over the past couple of years. Also, the Fed sets reserve requirements on the banks, which directly affects how much money they (the banks) can create (M1 and higher).

Lowering the interest rate isn't printing money, it's making the money they print to give out as loans to corrupt banks cheaper to obtain, thereby causing them to print more of it. Where do you think they get the money for these loans? The Fed's whole reason for existence is to create money. Greenspan or Bernanke would tell you that.

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