Rich Higgins NSC Memo - POTUS & POLITICAL WARFARE

[Martin Hash]

The only way the Deep State, Post Modernism, Collectivism works is if no one says anything about it until it's too late to do anything about it.

[Speaker to Animals]

The only way the Deep State, Post Modernism, Collectivism works is if no one says anything about it until it's too late to do anything about it.

That's 1000% correct, and it's why they go out of their way to defame and insult anybody who identifies the problem.

[Smitty-48]

Back then Milton Friedman described Nixon's economic policy well: "We are all Keynesians now". Those days going off the gold standard did have repercussions.

The reason they went off the gold standard was that they were spending like the proverbial drunken sailors, that's the thing about the postwar boom and how people have nostalgia for the America that never was, it wasn't sustainable. Even if it was the land of milk and honey for a time, that didn't actually last long, Americans now act like it was this endless boom, but it was rather short lived in the grand scheme of things, and much of it was related to debt financing in the end. Sure, the debt was coming down from the astronomical heights of World War Two, but it was only down relative to that peak, they were still blowing money that they didn't have, hand over fist, even with the much now ballyhoed "90% marginal tax rate on the rich!".

Prior to, they had only taken these sorts of extrordinary measures for a World War, but by the 1960's, the public expected that sort of spending as the rule, land of milk and honey was now the routine, and nobody was willing to tell the public that it couldn't last.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

In the halcyon days o' my youth, I remember hearing Chomsky refer to Nixon as the 'last liberal president' once. Took me longer than I care to admit to figure out what he meant by that.

Anyway, huge Nixon fan right here.

Yeah, but all those liberal interventionist policies that Nixon put in place, basically incited stagflation and the big recession of the mid to late seventies, which in the end, required harsh measures from Paul Volcker. Nixon was an economic populist, but that made him do the same cuckoo shit that every other cuckoo politician was doing in the seventies, I mean, wage and price controls imposed by the federal government? Cuckoo.

Oh yeah, it was popular with the public, they were applauding it at the time, only problem is, the public is fiscally and economically illiterate. He puts wage and price controls in at 4% inflation, which at the time was called "intolerable", and the Fed held the interest rate to 6% on the banks; within two years, inflation was 14%, that was the new "intolerable".

Maybe you're not old enough to remember what 14% inflation was like, nor what 22% interest rates to get that back under control was like neither, but I doubt you would have been a fan then.

In all fairness to Nixon, I don't think anybody had a clear idea exactly how currency would function untethered from gold. It is unfortunate that Volcker style deflation, or anything less than 100% optimism about constant growth forever, is unpopular, but I don't know how you stay totally non-interventionist when there is no standard.

The problem, as I see it, is nobody wants to be the guy at the helm when economic restriction is required, so nobody ever does it. I don't have faith that the unfettered operations of markets will result in the sort of relatively stable currency needed for markets to function.

TL;DR: Nixon rules, I don't think you can blame stagflation on him.

[Smitty-48]

Well conservatives in America certainly blamed Nixon, but then the Neocons took over and they ran the debt up so high, that made Nixon look like much less of a spendthrift in comparison.

[Speaker to Animals]

We needed intervention when there was a standard too. Going to a gold standard isn't going to take away economic cycles, but it would reduce a lot of the fuckery that goes on with the central bankers.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Well conservatives in America certainly blamed Nixon, but then the Neocons took over and they ran the debt up so high, that made Nixon look like much less of a spendthrift in comparison.

Well, he was a damn Quaker after all. Not some decadent Episcopalian like W.

[Smitty-48]

Unca Sugar needs an unlimited money supply, so he can bribe everybody with their own dollars, King Dollah is the source of all of Washington's power.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

And now they have it.

Thanks, Nixon!

[Smitty-48]

And now they have it.

Thanks, Nixon!

Well on the bright side, that plus the hydrogen bomb has pretty much shifted you from military imperialism where you would have to go out and fight wars to maintain the Empire of Liberty, and instead has turned into a dollar empire where you don't have to. I mean, all your wars are optional now, the likes of Vietnam and Iraq ain't exactly Great Powers which could threaten your Hegenomy, and for the most part, King Dollah is what keeps everybody in line, not the military.

The hydrogen bomb is a big stick, but without King Dollah you'd probably have to wave that stick about far more, and you probably don't want to go to the well with that very often, shit happens, and with the hydrogen bomb, you can't afford any mistakes at all.

Ironically, King Dollah's empire became so expansive, even the Communists couldn't escape it, because even the Soviets were propped up by King Dollah.

If you do ever make a mistake with them hydrogen bombs, that'll probably be when the gold standard comes back, as obviously; if King Dollah is living in a post apocalyptic radioactive wasteland, people would be somewhat less inclined to take his IOU's.