Quote of the day 30th January 2014
"Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing
things as they ought to be."
(HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, attributed)
Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria
Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Comments
seeing though things like the veil of money is something i have been trying to tell people for years, but many just cant grasp it. Its quite a simple thing, you see no one actually wants more money, they don't. They in fact want the goods that they can exchange money for (whet ever those goods or indeed services, are. No one wants more money. From there its quite a simple step to see that as the value of money in terms of "stuff" falls, then we see its not things getting more expensive, its the value of money falling. How to stop this? well here is an old idea, go onto a gold standard, where every pound is worth so much gold, it would solve this in a nutshell, and would prevent the government borrowing beyond their means.
There are advantages to the gold standard. The main trouble with it is what happens to the price of everything else if the supply and demand position for the commodity of gold itself shifts?
For example, the stolen treasure which the Spanish brought back from the americas in the 16th century caused a century of inflation throughout Europe by disrupting the supply and demand for gold and silver.
Yes, the levels of available gold can suddenly change, making gold more available, (cheaper) thus casing a perceived increase in the price of everything else, sure this can happen.
Thing is though you need to find a lot of gold to do this, and like common sense, gold is not that common either. So it does not happen very often.
Its not like you can turn on a printing press and make a paper note with no defined value. You need a bit of gold to make a coin, or at least a bit of paper which is a receipt for x amount of it. In the case of a receipt then store houses (banks) need to be audited to ensure the number of receipts, matches the amount of gold in the vault.
So to me your argument about gold can cause inflation, is a little like someone in whitehaven harbour saying its a little bit wavy in here, and heading off to sea for shelter.