Gold has been used by humans as a
symbol of value and prestige since antiquity. Its purest 24 carat form is a
bright, reddish-yellow dense, soft metal. Gold occurs as nuggets in rocks, in
underground veins and alluvial (loose sediment) deposits. So-called “gold bugs”
– people who reverently believe gold is the ultimate standard of value – have
occupied positions of societal power and influence for a very long time, but not recently. Gold bugs haven’t sat at
the citadels of US public authority for almost 90 years; that may soon change
if #45 gets his way. Oh my.
Consider first some golden
history.
The seemingly eternal allure of
gold obliged our ancestors to find it. People have mined gold for at least 7000
years in what’s now eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as well as China, India, Mesoamerica,
Spain, Ireland and Wales. Because gold served as the primary medium of exchange
within the Roman Empire, they developed and used ground-sluicing methods on a
large scale to extract gold. Historians believe the Roman invasion of Britain
in the first century AD was principally motivated to expand their supplies of this
prized metal.
The first precious-metal coins
were used as money in several places about the same time, around 600-500 BC; in
the Yellow River valley in northern China, in the Ganges River valley of N.E.
India and by the king of Lydia in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The
Lydian coins, shown below, were made from electrum – an alloy of gold and
silver. Officials stamped images on bean-sized lumps of electrum that helped
guarantee the value of each coin, and discourage counterfeiting. If only.
Lydian coin
Following the lead of Lydia, most
nations have employed gold specie to conduct commerce for centuries. During the
Middle Ages, Byzantine gold coins were used throughout Europe and the
Mediterranean. Twenty-two carat Spanish Doubloons were widely used in Europe
and the Americas from the early 16th to mid-19th centuries. During its primacy,
the Doubloon served as a multi-nation de
facto gold standard, a monetary system in which the standard unit of
currency is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The US formally adopted the gold
standard in 1873, using its $10 gold eagle coin as the nation’s primary
currency unit. The US mint produced gold coins of various denominations from 1872
through 1933. Like many other nations, our country effectively abandoned the gold standard in 1933
during the depths of the Great Depression. It finally and officially severed the
link between the dollar and gold
in 1971. The image below shows our “lady liberty” gold dollar coin first issued
in 1849.
US Lady Liberty gold dollar coin
The late 1840s ring a very special
chime in the golden history of the US.
The California Gold Rush began in
January 1848 when James Marshall found a placer nugget in a river at Sutter’s
Mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills almost 50 miles northeast of present-day
Sacramento. Proclamations of his discovery created such a popular incentive for
people also wanting to “strike it rich” that over 300,000 people soon headed
for California from nearby and far-away places. They came from each of our then-30 states and every territory. They also arrived with the gleam of gold in their
eyes from around the world, including the Sandwich Islands (aka Hawaii), China,
Latin America and Europe. Because of gold’s draw, California rapidly became a
state in 1850 without first being a territory, unlike any other western US
region.
There turned out to be a lot of
gold in the Sierra Nevada. By the end of 1848, the first year of the Gold Rush, $10 million in gold had been produced. The biggest nugget ever found was a bit larger than a shoebox
and weighed nearly 200 pounds. By 1865, $785 million worth of gold had come out
of the ground in California, probably making the difference in which side won
our Civil War. This multi-million dollar mountain of gold represented 60% of
the total US budget in 1865. It significantly contributed to keeping Union
soldiers clothed, fed and paid, and bought much-needed guns, bullets and
armaments. This massif of gold would be worth $12.9 billion in today’s dollars.
Very, very little of this gargantuan sum stayed in miners’ pockets; merchants
like Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins became far richer. Notwithstanding putting
California on the US map, the Gold Rush also decimated numerous indigenous
Native American communities. Untold environmental damage accompanied the
mining, especially the hydraulic variety that used 30,000 gallons of water each
minute.
Where did all this lustrous
California gold come from? Not from fairy dust. According to John McFee’s superb Assembling California that intertwines the
state’s geological and human history, the Sierra’s deposits of gold were
precipitated 150 million years ago when the third and last giant (10,000 square
mile) island-arc fragment of the Pacific plate – the Smartville Block – accreted
into the westernmost North American plate near where Auburn, California is now.
The Smartville Block not only doubled the width of what is now California, but
created its bountiful Mother Lode as well. California’s Mother Lode has
produced more gold than any other state – more than 106 million ounces since
1848. In modern times about 38% of gold is used for jewelry; coins and official
government uses, 22%; electrical and electronics, 34%; and other uses, 6%.
Now that we’ve scratched the
surface of the history and source of most of the nation’s gold, let’s return to
the present time and Judy Shelton, who adores gold.
Dr. Shelton has recently been
nominated by #45 to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Although
her nomination may not be as far-fetched as the president’s previous attempt to
install the totally unqualified Herman Cain on the Board, she is quite controversial.
She belongs to the justifiably much-endangered, very conservative tribe of
modern-day gold bugs. Like her fellow bugs, she wants to reverse President
Nixon’s decision to drop the gold standard and re-adopt it now. She has
publicly praised #45’s tax cuts and deregulation policies. She approves of the
president’s misguided trade war with China as a means of forcing it to “play by
the rules.” As I’ve mentioned before, no one's won this war. So far the president’s tariffs have cost us taxpayers $28 billion. That’s what
the Trump admiration has paid the farmers they wounded, with no end in sight. Nice call,
Judy.
Virtually all knowledgeable
monetary economists believe returning to the gold standard would harm the
economy and its citizens. The Federal Reserve’s principal means of influencing
the macroeconomy is by increasing or decreasing the nation’s money supply
depending on expected economic conditions. It increases the money supply if a
recession is expected, thus reducing interest rates to spur loans and investment. The
Fed decreases the money supply causing interest rates to rise, towards the end an
expansion, if higher inflation is expected.
Monetary policy is hardly an exact
science, but it would be significantly constrained under a gold standard. Why; because
our money supply would essentially be determined by how much gold
is produced.
Dr. Shelton has stated, “we make
America great again by making America’s money great again” through returning to
the gold standard. That’s patently absurd. Dean Baker, a macroeconomist who was
one of the first to identify the 2007–2008 US housing bubble that lead to the
Great Recession, likened returning to the gold standard as prescribing
chemotherapy for someone who doesn't have cancer. An apt diagnosis Dr. Baker.
Turning the economic clock back
and re-adopting the gold standard, as Dr. Shelton and Mr. Trump have fantasized,
would link the money supply to gold production. If
they actually thought through this fundamental relationship imposed by the gold
standard, they would not at all be pleased. I don’t believe they’ve thought
about it at all; it’s simply a sporadic gesture memorializing the unfamiliar “golden
days” of the past. It would not please #45 one single golden leaf to learn that
China is the world’s largest gold producer.
Since the end of the last
recession, US gold production has increased a meager 0.87% per year. This is why
many economists believe that a re-imposed gold standard would act as a limit on
economic growth. As an economy's productive capacity grows, then so should its
money supply. But because a gold standard requires that money be backed by the
metal, the scarcity of gold constrains the ability of the economy to produce
more capital and grow. Thus a gold-standard based monetary policy could no
longer be used to stabilize or grow the economy.
It’s likely that the Senate, under
the imprudent leadership of Mitch McConnell, will confirm Judy Shelton. A single
gold bug will then sit on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board. Her practical
and institutional influence will be limited. But that’s one too many bugs at our
central bank for anyone who wants an independent Fed to be a viable economic counterforce
to #45’s feckless thrusts. Where’s the political Terminix when we need it?
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