Filed under: General Editorial Dear CIGAs, Gold is on its way back into the monetary system. That is certain. It is also certain that one method being examined at the highest level is the Federal Reserve Gold Certificate Ratio, Modernized and Revitalized and no longer directly connected to interest rates. If you are one of the gold gang that fears Volcker as an advisor to Obama, then you are ignorant of Volcker’s previous position on gold early in his career. I believe he is this time pro-gold because of the Mother of All Crises - his description of the conditions now. Volcker does not waste words, nor is he glitzy. This is the Mother of All Crises, settlement of which demands a gold criterion which is the FRGCR. The price will float but around a pivot point of $1650 (or higher). It will more than likely be within $200 based on expansion or contraction of a measure of US international debt. Stable Money Is the Key to Recovery How the G-20 can rebuild the ‘capitalism of the future.’ By JUDY SHELTON NOVEMBER 14, 2008 Tomorrow’s "Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy" in Washington will have a stellar cast. Leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations will be there, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who initiated the whole affair, in order, as he put it, "to build together the capitalism of the future," will be in attendance, along with the host, our own President George W. Bush, and the chiefs of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window some 37 years ago, it marked the end of a golden age of robust trade and unprecedented global economic growth. The Bretton Woods system derived its strength from a commitment by the U.S. to redeem dollars for gold on demand. True, the right of convertibility at a pre-established rate was granted only to foreign central banks, not to individual dollar holders; therein lies the distinction between the Bretton Woods gold exchange system and a classical gold standard. Under Bretton Woods, participating nations agreed to maintain their own currencies at a fixed exchange rate relative to the dollar. Since the value of the dollar was fixed to gold at $35 per ounce of gold — guaranteed by the redemption privilege — it was as if all currencies were anchored to gold. It also meant all currencies were convertible into each other at fixed rates. Paul Volcker, former Fed chairman, was at Camp David with Nixon on that fateful day, Aug. 15, when the system was ended. Mr. Volcker, serving as Treasury undersecretary for monetary affairs at the time, had misgivings; and he has since noted that the inflationary pressures which caused us to go off the gold standard in the first place have only worsened. Moreover, he suggests, floating rates undermine the fundamental tenets of comparative advantage. "What can an exchange rate really mean," he wrote in "Changing Fortunes" (1992), "in terms of everything a textbook teaches about rational economic decision making, when it changes by 30% or more in the space of 12 months only to reverse itself? What kind of signals does that send about where a businessman should intelligently invest his capital for long-term profitability? In the grand scheme of economic life first described by Adam Smith, in which nations like individuals should concentrate on the things they do best, how can anyone decide which country produces what most efficiently when the prices change so fast? The answer, to me, must be that such large swings are a symptom of a system in disarray." More… ShareThis| Email This Post | Print This Post