Ford had, in 1919, borrowed some seventy-five million dollars (figures vary in differing sources) to purchase the stock of the other holders in the company.
The 1956 obituary of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Sr.
Had to have been in the '40s or so based on the timeline in the Obituary.
FTR: Not the left field. “End the Fed”, referenced upthread by Joe, was written by Ron Paul. Sourcing is appropriate and helpful.
An excerpt from a book America: What Went Wrong:
This book was published over two decades ago but it seems to have seen the writing on the wall even then with regard to income inequality and how business models were changing - and not necessarily for the better.
As you can see from the passage, businesses always borrowed money, even in the '50s. They just do it more now, for better or worse.
My bad. I thought I’d seen everything in the thread but I missed that.
Still, browbeating someone over and over and telling them they’re an idiot (absent good info/argument) is not a good introduction to someone posting in GQ. Plenty of posts actually try to make a case that’s informative. Some not so much.
Can you quote me calling the poster idiot? No? Then you will retract that I was “telling them they’re an idiot” unless you have reason to believe the poster is actually Ron Paul, a public personality who I encourage everyone to call an idiot (provided he doesn’t post here).
Oh please. “I never said he was stupid, I just said that everything he believes is stupid because his stupid ideas were implanted in him by stupid people clearly because there’s nothing but stupid there!” is weaseling.
Here are your first few posts in the thread. None of them added anything to the discussion. They were simply browbeating and throwing around insults.
Just because you’re probably right doesn’t mean you get to make poor arguments and lower the level of discourse of the discussion. It hurts your side more than helps.
You never say “here’s why the gold standard is dumb” or “here’s some data to show you why your arguments are flawed”, it’s just brow beating and ad hominems by proxy.
I repeat:
So retract, please. You accused me of something you cannot back up. Which makes you nobody to tell me or anyone what constitutes a “poor argument,” incidentally.
“Peculiar”? Interesting way to spell “fraudulent”. I’m interested in your opinion, why do you think they should have this privilege of creating money?
The length of time a fraud has been perpetrated does not make it correct.
And the disadvantage that the degradation of money is in the hands of the bankers. Hence the need to have a currency immune to degradation by bankers or politicians.
How is it a “free market” when one self-appointed class creates money out of thin air? That sounds like a very manipulated market to me.
Well perhaps if your knowledge of monetary history was a little better, you might have a leg to stand on. As far as I know, the gold standard wasn’t abandoned until Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, which is only 44 years ago, not almost a century ago. I might be generous and allow that FDR making the holding of gold by private citizens a crime was the beginning of the removal of the gold standard, and grant eighty some years is almost a century ago but the fact remains the dollar was convertible into silver up until 1964 and and it was convertible into gold internationally until 1971. But then again I might not be.
Government/bank cooperation? That’s what you call it? I call it bank-owned government. And why don’t we look at the results since this “cooperation” has been unshackled from the burden of convertibility into something of real value, like precious metals? According to the BLS, the dollar has lost about 85% of its value since 1970. Far from it being the Fed’s job to “fight” inflation, the Fed actually generates inflation and the loss of value of the currency.
The banking establishment gets the laws and regulations that they want. So yeah I’d blame the banks, after all they own all the politicians.
No actually I found out about Ron Paul well after I was introduced to the fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking. If you really want to know, I always thought there was something wrong with economics after I took a couple of courses in the 70s. What opened my eyes was a combination of The Creature from Jekyll Island and The Money Masters around the turn-of-the-century.
I really have a hard time understanding why anyone would support such a system, unless of course they were bankers.
My question is why wasn’t fractional reserve banking outlawed as the scam it is, rather than institutionalized in “regulations”. If the scam causes so much trouble, why do we allow it to continue?
The depressions were caused by banks going under, for the most part, either here or abroad… And banks go under because they loan out more money than they really have. How is this a system that should be regulated instead of abolished?
No, I trade stocks. I’m not lending anyone anything, I’m buying a piece of the business and I expect dividends and possibly capital appreciation, not interest.
Please please don’t make me explain to you that banks do no such thing.
When did I say I was in favor of a gold standard? Matter of fact I prefer silver among the precious metals.
So your entire argument for the current fractional reserve privately owned central bank inflation machine is that Ron Paul and who ever else I listen to is dumb?
That’s not very convincing.
The Great Depression was an improvement? The government constantly bailing out too big to fail banks is an improvement? 600% inflation since 1970 is an improvement?
Wow must have been really, really bad in the past!
The only thing that’s improved is that the rich bankers have become more skilled in their fleecing of the flock.
Let’s say you and I exchange IOU’s; “I Owe Joe (or his assignee) $10, signed Septimus” and likewise the other way. $20 of paper money has been created! Stripped of superfluous complexity, that is the mechanism by which banks create money. The difference is whether a given person is more likely to accept a Citibank Debit Card than a piece of paper signed Joe the Bartender.
Government regulation was developed to reduce the damage fraudulent bankers could do, not to encourage fraud.
So you want Silver == Money? Unlike many Dopers I won’t reject the idea out of hand, but be aware that you introduce more problems than you solve. Silver’s price isn’t stable. You’ll still end up with some form of “fractional-reserve money,” just based on a different monetary base.
At one point you disapprove of companies selling debt paper, but now you want companes to buy such paper. Inconsistent?
Basing your case on a half-understood nitpick won’t get you credibility.
Phrases like “lost 85% of its value” is a tipoff that the writer is fundamentally lacking relevant knowledge of monetary policy. To start with the trivial, inflation per year is a useful parameter; compounding it over decades is an ignorant scare tactic.
The Fed has done an excellent job of fighting inflation, though deliberately setting a target greater than zero. And it has other proiorities.
If one dollar loses 3% of its value every year, after 150 years, only a penny’s value is left. But that’s not economics – that’s trivial arithmetic intended to frighten children. The dollar is a measuring-rod to assist in the trading of labor for food, and fabrics for iron ore, etc. A currency with predictable inflation rate is as useful as a precious-metal currency, and much superior in many ways.
Unless you’re one of the weirdos who thinks that because the dollar lost 85% of its value, American people were robbed of 85% of their wealth, I recommend you consider inflation more carefully, and seek an understanding not based on useless hyperbole.
Oh, BTW. At any point in U.S. history, selling gold and using the proceeds to buy interest-bearing 10-year governments bonds, and rolling principlal and interest forward would … outperfom the gold in the ground … even ignoring the costs of bodyguard and vault to protect the gold.
So will you answerr my question? Where do you learn this stuff?
I’m not familiar with these economists. Links to some of their papers?
Bullshit. Just over 60 years ago my father, like plenty of other people, went into debt to buy our house. It was not at all something he or anyone else avoided.
Things are about three times more expensive, in terms of constant dollars, than when I got my degree. But people we hire today get three times what I did. Big deal. And it is not like we are that much better off with our low inflation than we were back in 1982 with high inflation. In some ways we are worse off. Giving out raises when the average raise was 10% was great - much better than when the average raise was 2%.
Gold is very valuable in dentistry, in building electronics, and in creating beautiful things. But it has no intrinsic value. None - or no more than copper, silver and silicon have. Our primitive ancestors saw a nugget, said “oh, shiny” and we’ve suffered gold fever ever since. Time for gold bugs to get out of the Stone Age.
The value of currency today is controlled by market (with some government intervention.) Why would someone who claims to be a capitalist not like this?
It was. The Great Depression happened while we were on the gold standard. Per capita income began to raise almost immediately when the US moved away from the gold standard and we haven’t had anything as bad as the GD since. Sounds like moving off the gold standard has helped.
No it’s not an attack, they seem to think it’s fine. I just posted it to show that the banks create money out of thin air and they admit it.The Fed’s website is where I found a table of current reserve requirements.
Of course you mean bank notes. Promises to pay money, not money itself. And of course, since…
… If more than just a few of their customers wanted their money (you know, gold), that bank would have to close their doors, causing one of those “panics”.
I keep wondering how otherwise intelligent people can support a system that allows banks to daily commit fraud.
No but a SILVER dollar was worth a dollar, by definition. I have many silver dollars in my collection. Each of them, just in silver content, worth about 14 of those Federal Reserve notes. Do your bankers notes hold their value as well?
No I didn’t think so.
That is all really hilarious statement! You’re calling the people who got stuck with notes (not bills, notes. There is a big difference) from banks who overextended their lending the scammers, when the banks of the real scammers!
What you call scammers, I call suckers. Or marks as in the mark in a confidence game.
I’m fully aware of the shenanigans that banks have pulled throughout the years,
right down to the buckboard carrying the barrel full of nails with a layer of gold coins on the top just ahead of the bank examiner going to each bank.
Yeah who caused it? bankers loaning out money to people who could never afford to pay it back and then bundling them and selling them to unsuspecting investors meanwhile betting on the housing market collapse?
How can you possibly support these cretins?
Okay partially take it back. If you arbitrage the difference between the interest rate you’re paying and the return you’re getting on that same money sure take on the debt. Of course this is mostly only available to very large amounts of money.
You and me or a small businessman, not so much.
Okay you said Ron Paul is dumb, you said the gold standard is dumb.
You have a contribution other than calling things dumb?
I call BS. I referenced that only AFTER he called Ron Paul dumb, and I said it was a lightweight treatment of the subject.
No, Ron Paul is not my “mentor” and I could care less about him, or Rand. To me they’re just bought and paid for politicians. I consider it stupid that anyone would bring him up when I didn’t at all.
Perhaps it indicates that some people think Paul is the alpha and omega of the anti-Fed movement. He isn’t. Perhaps those people should read some other things to get the idea of what money is supposed to be, and it’s not banker’s IOUs. Matter of fact, I think his campaign to audit the Fed is ridiculous. We need to eliminate fractional reserve banking, nothing short of that will improve the situation for people who actually work and produce for a living.