Zarlenga: Kulta on osa ongelmaa ei ratkaisua

Steven Zarlenga on American Monetary Instituten (AMI)johtaja ja kirjailija. Hänen kirjoittamansa kirja on paksu monisatasivuvuinen rahahistoriallinen eepos The Lost Science of Money.
AMI järjestää Chicagossa joka syksy konferenssin mihin kutsutaan maailman kaikki osaavimmat laajaa raha- ja finanssipoliittista uudistusajatusta tutkineet tahot. AMI ja Dennis Kucinich ovat tehneet tiiviisti yhteistyötä ja Kucinich onkin esitellyt lakiehdotuksen The American Monetary Act. (Myös tämä)
Unohtamatta sitä että myös eräs Richard C. Cook on ollut porukassa mukana viilaamassa ideoita ja lakitekstiä.

Löysin kirjanmerkkilinkeistäni erään vuoden vanhan haastattelun missä Alistair McConnaichin kysyy ja Steven Zarlenga vastailee kysymyksiin.

Haastattelu on pitkä ja käsittelee paljon eri aiheita mutta tartun tässä postauksessa lähinnä Zarlengan näkemyksiin kullasta ja kultakannasta. Tällä blogilla poikkesi ennen huomattavan paljon itävaltalaisen talouskoulun kannattajia ja "kultabugeja" eli kultakantaintoilijoita kunnes sitten huomasivat että en ollutkaan samoilla linjoilla heidän kanssaan. Eikä täällä ole sen kylän poikia paljon tämän jälkeen nähty.

Omasta mielestäni kultakanta on looginen ajatusvirhe ja koko touhua voisi kuvailla jonain haikailuna niihin aikoihin kun käytettiin hevosia ja kiesejä. Meinaan - sehän varmistaisi ettei kenenkään vauhti edes hetkellisesti nouse yli 60 km/t.

Mutta mitä sanoo Zarlenga?


THE QUESTION OF GOLD
When you started off, you were thinking that gold was part of the solution. When you finished, 12 years later, why had your ideas changed?

One of the wonderful things about doing this kind of research is what you learn, and I learned that gold was not a part of the answer. In the historical studies, you could see that gold was part of the problem that the banking establishment -- we could call it the financial oligarchy, whatever form it was taking -- was able to easily manipulate.

Tajusin pikkuhiljaa että kulta oli osa ongelmaa eikä sen ratkaisua. Historia näyttää miten pankkipiirit - finanssioligarkia on käyttänyt kultaa ja sen hinnanmanipulointia hyväkseen.

Aristotle gave us the science of money. Del Mar gave me the keys to rediscover it. That science was laid out by Aristotle when he summed it up in one sentence. He said, money "exists not by nature, but by law." So he is telling us that money is not something that comes out of a mine. It is something that comes out of society. It is a legal power of society, and that was quite different from where I had started.

Aristoteles opetti meille "ettei raha tule luonnosta vaan lakipykälistä". Se ei siis tule kaivoksista vaan syntyy yhteiskunnassa.

What would you say to those "gold bugs" who say that gold is a good investment. For example, you hear them say "50 years ago one bar of gold could buy a £5,000 pound house. Today, that same bar of gold will buy the same house, even though the house is now worth £50,000."

I would say to the gold people, "Look up the history of the price of gold because it is just not true!" What we find by looking at the gold prices is that gold is extremely volatile. I've published, in the book, what happens to gold during different periods. We have periods where gold and silver lost 80% of their value and never recovered, for example from 1500-1650, where gold was being stolen from the Central and South American Indians. Essentially the money supply of Europe rose about 4 times and the value of gold dropped 80% during that period.

Now some would say, "Oh that is going way back to the 16th and 17th centuries." Well, OK, lets go back to 1918 through 1926, 27. We had the value of gold dropping 60% in just a short period. So, that was a gold inflation in the modern times. So the gold bugs should understand that gold is volatile. It moves up fast, it moves down fast.

Even more recently, go to 1981. Gold was at $880 an ounce. It dropped down over a period of 15 years to $232 an ounce. Gold is volatile. Now the gold bugs try to say, "Well, that is not really gold changing. That's the dollar changing." But that is crazy. The dollar didn't change that much. Gold is volatile -- it's a fact.

En käännä tästä kuin pari lausetta. Kullan hinta on kaikkea muuta kuin vakaa - eikä kullan hintavaihteluita voi selittää inflaatiolla tai dollarin vaihtoarvon laskemisella. Kullan hinta voi nousta jyrkästi ja sitten laskea yhtä jyrkästi.

What do these gold bugs want? Do they want the currency to be tied to gold?

They don't have a clear solution. They talk about "going back to a gold standard". But we never really had that! Even when they think there was a gold standard, it was always mixed with bank paper. And the reason for that is demonstrated eloquently by William Hixson in his 1993 book The Triumph of the Bankers, where he shows that the production of gold does not keep up with population growth. So if you are going to base the money system on gold, you have constant deflation, that is, constant increases in the value of money.

Kullan määrä ei tietenkään seuraa väestönkasvua - kultakannasta seuraisi deflaatiota eli rahan arvon jatkuvaa nousua.

The problem the gold people have is that they are confusing money with wealth. Aristotle's definition separates money from wealth. If you don't separate money from wealth, if you define money as wealth, then the wealthy are going to control not only their own money, they are going to control the monetary system -- which belongs under societal control. It should not be controlled by particular interest groups, or cliques or so- called elites.

So, the mistake is a psychological one. They are confusing their investments with money.

Kultabugit ovat sekoittaneet investoinnin ja rahan. Ne kuuluu pitää erillään muuten rikkaat pääsevät ohjaamaan koko rahajärjestelmää omaksi edukseen - vaikka tämä kuuluu julkisen vallan alueisiin. Rahan arvon ja määrää valvontaa ei tulisi antaa minkään eturyhmän hallintaan.

Eli ongelma on "kultabugien" ajatusmaailmassa. Nämä yksinkertaisesti sekoittavat sijoitukset rahaan.

Katkaisen kultakritiikin tähän. Artikkeli kuitenkin jatkuu. Palaan vielä sen muihin osiin myöhemmissä postauksissa.

Päivitys: tässä yksi näkemys Zarlengan kirjasta The Lost Science of Money.

"The take-over of the economy by bankers has thus required the suppression of much of our history and literature, beginning with Aristotle and Plato who were explicit on the distinction between the two aspects of money. There were always two distinct and incompatible ways of appraising the precious metals – as plain commodities, and as money or proto-money where the value was what the monarch stamped on a sample of the metal. Treating money as a simple commodity thus requires a high degree of obfuscation."