|
-- Posted Wednesday, 2 March 2005 | Digg This Article
In response to being asked why the two million Pompeians of today are not fearful of a Mt. Vesuvius eruption which killed 10,000 of their ancestors in 79 A.D., the volcanologist replied: “because they have no personal experience of the horror.”
  Doesn’t that pretty much give us the same explanation today as to why Americans or world investors motor merrily along the paper brick road in the Land of Oz oblivious to any deep economic sinkholes in their path? Because we’ve never witnessed an economic debacle in our lifetimes, it can never happen.
People of my era were exhorted to clean our plates by remembering the “starving Armenians.” My parents, like yours, were most likely frugal, cautious, and ever mindful of storing up canned foods for an “emergency”. That ‘emergency’ stash I later came to realize was in the likely event of another Depression in their lifetime.
Well, that Depression never came again in their lifetimes, and from what I read the Armenians still have tough lives.
As all Civil War era citizens have passed along, we can only speculate what their experienced words of wisdom to their immediate descendants might have been. For the South, we can make an educated guess that given a repeat of the horror of living in a period when their trusted Confederate money became worthless, they’d sock away gold and silver coins to no limit. Even northerners, who survived marginally better, still saw the Greenback and suspension of specie and the introduction of legal tender laws. Both those governments were successful in purchasing gold and silver specie money for paper from their people because their citizens trusted them. You see, even that 1860s generation no longer had the vivid memory of the Revolutionary War in which saw the Continental become worthless. We’re sure there were volcanologists back then who were raising the alarm, but their warnings went unheeded just as Floridians and Asians suffered tragically from hurricanes and a mega tsunami.
Americans, and by extension the world, have yet to fully experience the volcanic eruption of the contemporary dollar. True, FDR, devaluing it by seventy-five percent, and it’s been losing value for nearly 100 years, but still dollar holders have not caught on. FDR said the government was reclaiming the gold – perhaps the biggest lie ever told by a US politician. The people’s gold was never the government’s gold to begin with. You cannot reclaim what was never yours to begin with. Any gold in the US Treasury came from the people in exchange for government debt paper with the expressed belief that it (gold) could be reclaimed by the people at any time!
It’s been 140 years since people saw their money become worthless as a result of the Civil War. Up until 1030 A.D. Mt. Vesuvius erupted about once every 100 years. Then it went into dormancy until about 1630 or so when another several thousand were killed. Charlestonians have rebuilt luxury homes along the barrier islands in the aftermath of 1989’s Hurricane Hugo in the belief that it can never happen again in their lifetimes. Perhaps they’re right.
Just as warnings of impending harsh acts of God have come from volcanologists and meteorologists, there have been Econocataclysmatologists pointing out the early warning signs to any who would listen. Because there were few with vivid experiences of currency holocausts, who would lend an ear to the uttered cautionary words?
Even the German lessons learned from the 1923 Weimar inflation have long since been forgotten. People all over the world are endeared to paper. The Argentineans will never learn it seems! Even a novice sailor knows that when all the passengers are on one side of the boat, it’ll capsize!  
One of the most hurtful images was the US Army discovery among the Nazi gold of hundreds of bags of US gold double eagle coins. That was gold exchanged for repatriated dollars from European central banks. Gold coins confiscated by fiat from the American people. Heritage lost. If those 19th century coins weren’t numismatic when stolen they certainly are now! Where they ultimately went, your guess is as good as mine.
When then a volcanologist points out that a volcano such as Mt. Vesuvius is still active, but not erupting, wouldn’t you be just as well advised to seek shelter when a Econocataclysmatologist identifies the volcanic ash rising above the US dollar?
- - Charleston Voice
-- Posted Wednesday, 2 March 2005 | Digg This Article
This article is brought to you by the Charleston Voice E-mail List. To subscribe FREE to the distribution list, send an e-mail to: Barnacle@chasvoice.biz with 'SUBSCRIBE' in the subject line.
Previous Articles by Charleston Voice
|
