The Wrongologist – Page 234 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 24, 2014

Here at Casa Wrong, we see the end of summer coming. It’s a sad time most years, but not now. Today, August HAS TO DIE! Here’s why:

• Foley was beheaded
• Instead of “back to school”, this August it is “back to Iraq”
• Russia invades Ukraine, says it’s for humanitarian reasons
• The Ebola epidemic continues to grow
• The reason why a teen in Ferguson is dead remains unresolved
• Hamas and Israel seem willing to fight to the death
• We still don’t know who shot down the MH17 over Ukraine
• Mitch McConnell says he’s willing to shut down the government again

August brought home that every pillar that has supported international order is tottering, if not yet collapsing. That means the UN, NATO and a strong, unified America. The “what’s wrong” list could be much longer, but what would be the point? August must die. On to humor.

ISIS or IS or ISIL, it’s a cancer:

James Foley is the most recent in a long line:

And in Ferguson news, don’t shoot is everyone’s mantra:

In domestic ~~warfare~~ policing, mindset should be first, not last:

Mayor Daley, 1968: “The police are here to preserve disorder”:

Don’t you feel safer knowing she’s off the streets?

https://twitter.com/stevenjhsieh/status/501492139197759488

You can read about this 90 year old Ferguson demonstrator here

Friday Music Break – August 22, 2014

Continuing our national meditation on Ferguson, MO, Here are three songs about guns and state power:

First, “Guns of Brixton”, written by The Clash bassist Paul Simonon. The song pre-dates the riots that took place in 1981 and again in 1985 in Brixton, but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent that were building due to the heavy-handedness of the police, and the recession at that time in England.

You can see The Clash perform this song all over the web. Here is the great Jimmy Cliff doing his take on their reggae-inflected song. Few remember that thirty years ago, the Clash were booed off the stage at Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica.

The line we like:

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
or on the trigger of your gun?

Next, here is Green Day doing “21 Guns”, an anti-gun, anti-war anthem from their eighth album, 21st Century Breakdown. The line we like is up first:

Do you know what’s worth fighting for?
When it’s not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away and you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?

Finally, “Ohio” from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was released as a single in June of 1970, about a month after the May 4, 1970 shooting by the Ohio National Guard that killed 4 and wounded 9 students. In thirteen seconds, the guardsmen fired 67 rounds. If it hadn’t only been 3 years after the Newark NJ riot where the Guard killed 26, and if the Guard hadn’t killed white students at Kent State, we might not remember it today. Indeed, few remember that eleven days later, 2 more students were killed under similar circumstances at what was then Jackson State College in Jackson, MS, a historically black school.

Eight of the Ohio guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense. In 1974, the Judge dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution’s case was too weak to warrant a trial. But we still remember: “4 dead in Ohio”.

Ferguson, Week Two

What we know: Two weeks ago, a police officer shot a man for jaywalking.

But, without any additional official information, we’ve learned a lot from Ferguson:

• The police can pretty much do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. And it’s gonna be your fault.
• Police shoot African-American men with impunity.
• Most police forces in America have been militarized by the federal government.
• Militarized tactics and behavior by police has become accepted and normalized by local and state politicians, particularly since the Boston Marathon Bomber Manhunt.
• We’re way past “free-speech zones” now. Remember them? The Occupy Movement taught us that if you’re protesting, (peacefully or not) the police now bust you up without consequence.
• Reporters and journalists can and will be arbitrarily detained and/or tossed in jail. This began during the BP oil spill, increased with Occupy New York, and now is blatant in Ferguson. The police will shoot journalists with bean-bags and rubber bullets even if the journalists have complied with police demands.
• The airspace above an area where a dispute takes place can be completely closed to the media, even if there is no risk.

What you smell is the Constitution burning. All of the above should cause us to examine what is going on with police-involved killings in the US. Addicting Info reports:

According to data compiled by the FBI, in a seven year period ending in 2012 an average of nearly two black people were killed by police every week. Even more troublesome: Almost 20% of those killed were under the age of 21, more than double the rate of whites of the same age group. If you are black, being young doesn’t seem to protect you.

Deadspin reports that the US has no comprehensive database of police shootings. And there is no standardized process by which officers log when they’ve discharged their weapons, and why. There is no central infrastructure for compiling that information and making it public. There are over 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, yet fewer than 900 report their shootings to the FBI. No one is keeping track of how many American citizens are shot by their police.

USA TODAY quotes University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert:

I’ve looked at records in hundreds of departments…and it is very rare that you find someone saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.’ In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.

The Wrongologist reported that in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household. This means Ferguson is very reliant on revenue sourced from policing: From the Ferguson 2014 budget, here is a breakdown of The City of Ferguson’s revenues: in 2013, revenues from sales taxes were $5.8 million, while revenues from fines and public safety were $2.6 million (18% of total). In 2014, fines are expected to increase by $100k:

The increase in Fines and Public Safety revenues comes from both manned and un-manned traffic enforcement. Due to a more concentrated focus on traffic enforcement, municipal court revenues have risen about 44% or $623,000 from those in FY 2010-2011. Total court revenues are expected to reach $2,029,000 in FY 2013-2014. In the fall of 2011, the City implemented camera enforcement in three high traffic accident incidence intersections. Fines resulting from this implementation represent a portion of the increased revenues over the period, however, it should be noted that additional manned traffic enforcement also contributed to the increase.

We also learned from Ferguson that police officer safety is the number one issue on our streets today, even though officer fatalities are down. The Economist reports that in 2013, 30 cops were shot and killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen each year. And the primary cause for officer fatalities this year was traffic-related incidents, which claimed 46 lives. Firearms-related incidents are at the lowest level since 1887, when 27 officers were shot to death.

Sadly, the number one priority for the police used to be public safety, not police safety, and we are a coarser society because of the change.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time on what Ferguson has not yet delivered:

…a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

Could Ferguson MO become Newark NJ, 1967?

A little history:

A riot broke out in Newark in 1967, triggered by the police beating a black cab driver, who was falsely reported to have died. Five nights of rioting and looting followed in what the press in those days called the “ghetto”. Republican Governor Richard J. Hughes called up the New Jersey National Guard. When the National Guard arrived, reports began coming in of scores of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark with supplies for the uprising.

As a result, when the Police or the Guard saw people, or some shadow on far away windows, they began shooting. The results? 26 deaths and 725 wounded.

Were there truly black snipers? Here is some information from the report of The Kerner Commission: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the summer of 1967, after the riots in Newark, Detroit, and 125 other cities, President Lyndon Johnson convened an advisory commission to look into what happened and why. The report of the Kerner Commission, which warned of a nation moving toward a “system of apartheid” in its cities, concluded that the so-called snipers in Newark were actually members of the police, Troopers, and Guard, who, lacking any reliable communications and possessed by fear of the specter of armed black men, often ended up shooting at each other.

The most dangerous person in the world is a frightened person. If they are armed to the teeth, and they are frightened, really bad things can happen. It is very interesting to read contemporaneous reporting from the 1967 riot. The rioters are called “terrorists” by the New York Times:

Incensed by the slaying of a white fire captain by Negro snipers, Gov. Richard J. Hughes said he was considering an appeal for Federal help in capturing the terrorists.

What happened next was urban warfare. More from the NYT of July 16, 1967:

After midnight, Springfield Avenue, the main commercial street in the ghetto, was raked by machine gun fire from guardsmen and the police, who ducked behind cars and sprayed the roofs of buildings thought to contain terrorists…The Governor again said that the riots were not caused by a spontaneous uprising against unemployment, squalid housing and a general hopelessness – as negro leaders insist – but were an outbreak by a “vicious criminal element.” Thrusting out his jaw, he promised that the rioters would receive swift and retributive justice.

Ferguson hasn’t gotten to that point yet. But it has similar elements, all waiting for a spark.

The Kerner Commission Report concluded that the trigger for the Newark riots and those in 125 other US cities, were confrontations between the local police and members of local African-American communities. It also concluded that the residents’ held a perception (often justified) of the largely white police as an occupying force which was in the community to serve and protect the interests of the privileged white communities rather than to serve and protect the legitimate interests of the local minority residents, and that the police inherently harbored racist attitudes toward residents of minority communities that they were also charged to serve.

Compare that conclusion of 47 years ago to Ferguson MO today.

Newsweek reports that 22% of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7% receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3%, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

In the media commentary on Ferguson, there is little mention of the economic and social conditions that underlie both the current growth of police repression and the eruption of popular anger in response to it. We don’t hear that one out of four residents of St. Louis lives in poverty. Or that the wholesale closure of auto plants, breweries and other manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of two-thirds of St. Louis’s population since 1950.

Or, that 47% of the metropolitan area’s African American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.

What we are seeing in Ferguson is a disturbing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. And it is not just in miniority neighborhoods. Think about the excessive force used by police all across America to break up the Occupy movement’s civil disobedience.

This is why police departments across the US are being prepared and equipped to deal with mass unrest. That is what The Powers That Be are expecting.

Along with everybody else who has seen the writing on the wall.

Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience:

…Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest…

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 17, 2014

Difficult week. Ferguson MO, Iraq and RIP Robin:

The media is making a thing of Robin Williams’s suicide. Media coverage and commentary is wall-to-wall, just like when Seymour Phillip Hoffman OD’ed.

They ignore that CNN says that there are 22 suicides a DAY among America’s veterans. What has happened to proportionality in the press?

A study published this week in Health Affairs states that spending on behavioral health disorders is expected to decline from 7.4% of total health spending in 2009 to 6.5% in 2020, while actual dollars spent are projected to increase from $172 billion in 2009 to $281 billion in 2020. More needs to be done.

From the police blotter:

We heard on Friday that Michael Brown may have stolen cigars from a convenience store. The media says that it shows the kid was no saint. But people aren’t shot for shoplifting, they get arrested and need help from lawyers like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to help reduce their charges. This is despite the fact that shoplifting costs American retailers approximately $14B annually. Once again, the media are conflating the dead boy and his possible crime with the right of the people to free assembly to protest a grievance against their government, as well as the threat that is posed to ordinary Americans by militarized police.

The Ice Bucket Challenge throws cold water on Obama:

We revise our view of Iraqi history:

Iraq owns us. 4 US presidents in row have been called to action there:

Friday Music Break – August 15, 2014

With all that is happening this week in Ferguson, MO, we need to reflect on the struggles and violence that were hallmarks of the Civil Rights movement. Here are three songs from America’s Civil Rights era, which some amongst us (that’s you, SCOTUS) think has no relevance to what is happening in America today. They are of course, wrong.

We start with “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize“, an influential folk song during the American civil rights movement. Although the song was composed as a hymn well before World War I, the lyrics to this version were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. It is based on the traditional song, “Gospel Plow”, which is also known as “Hold On”, and “Keep Your Hand On The Plow”.

In this version from 2006, Bruce Springsteen starts the vocal, but then Marc Anthony Thompson (with hat) comes in and joins him, it becomes a great soul-stirring duet. Thompson has recorded under the name Chocolate Genius.

Next, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by the great Sam Cooke. It was a 1964 single, first recorded in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after Cooke’s death in late 1964:

Here is Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome” live in 1963. You may not know that the words and music were written by Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger.

The story behind the story of We shall Overcome is that the song is based on the early hymn “U Sanctissima.” Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in Philadelphia, added new words in 1901 and called his new hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” In the ensuing decades, the song became a favorite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as “I Will Overcome.” Apparently, the song was brought to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN. The school’s cultural director was Zilphia Horton. Pete Seeger visited the school and changed “We will overcome” to “We shall overcome.” Guy Carawan, a great folk artist who plays the hammer dulcimer, was then a music director at the Highlander School. He introduced it to civil rights activists during a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in 1960. Frank Hamilton was in Seeger’s band. The copyright omits Charles A. Tindley.

Let’s remember these words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant…In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Please don’t be silent.

What America has Become

The world is talking about Ferguson MO. Yesterday, a group of SWAT forces in riot gear faced angry citizens who had gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown. After nightfall, police deployed tear gas against the crowd, warning the protest was “no longer peaceful”.

“This is no longer a peaceful assembly. Go home or be subject to arrest,” police warned through a loudspeaker, shortly before shooting tear gas at the protesters. Police were also shooting rubber bullets while smoke grenades and tear gas canisters fell into the crowd.

Meanwhile, some of the protesters reportedly threw rocks and bottles at the police. The police also arrested reporters, an alderman, and a state Senator. The two arrested reporters, Wesley Lowery of the WaPo and Ryan Reilly of the HuffPo, were in a McDonald’s recharging their devices and writing up reports. They had identified themselves as reporters to the arresting officers. The WaPo reported that for the past week in Ferguson, reporters have been using the McDonald’s a few blocks from the scene of Michael Brown’s shooting as a staging area. Demonstrations have blown up each night nearby. But inside there’s Wi-Fi and outlets, so it’s common for reporters to gather there. The Police closed the McDonald’s. Both reporters were released after a short time in a holding cell. Both say they were assaulted.

So, this is what America has become. SWAT teams in Ferguson, in daylight, facing unarmed civilians:

And here is a short video loop taken by HuffPo reporter Ryan Reilly on Wednesday. HuffPo, in a statement, said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Ryan, who has reported multiple times from Guantanamo Bay, said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers, and treated those inside the McDonald’s as “enemy combatants.” Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.

Police are no longer seen as members of the community dedicated to “Protect and Serve”. They are becoming domestic soldiers. Local police departments throughout have the equivalent of tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style boot camp training.

When it comes to the up-armoring and militarization of America’s police forces, this is completely run-of-the-mill stuff.

In June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. The Pentagon has handed out 600 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs to them for essentially no cost, with plenty more to come. They’re surplus equipment, mostly from our recent wars, and perhaps they will indeed prove handy for a sheriff fretting about insurgent IEDs (roadside bombs) in New Jersey or elsewhere in the country.

The worst part of outfitting and training police officers as soldiers will be psychological. Give a man access to drones, MRAPs, and body armor, and he’ll believe that his job isn’t simply to protect and serve, but to eliminate danger.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re deployed in battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy.

Let’s remember that this is America, not a war zone.

The militarization of police departments has been covered by the Wrongologist here. The New York Times has reported on all of the other free military gear – like machine guns, armored vehicles and aircraft – that police are receiving from the Pentagon. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the DHS has handed out $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many for the purchase of armored vehicles and weapons. This program has created a cottage industry of companies who make militarized equipment and take checks from local towns in exchange for military hardware.

From Greg Howard:

There are reasons why white gun rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children’s toys.

Do the police actions in Ferguson look similar to police actions during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? National Guard soldiers, tear gas, and fire hoses were the old way of keeping protestors in line, but now the police are the soldiers. They still use the tear gas, but MRAPs and stun grenades are the new methods of disorienting protestors.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) needs to address why local police believe that it is appropriate to arrest reporters. The DOJ needs to address why local police can walk on the people’s right to peaceably assemble.

The DOJ needs to do more than “monitor” the local situation.

And the mainstream media can be complicit in this too. The people who showed up at Ted Bundy’s ranch were called “supporters” and the protestors in Ferguson are referred to as an “angry mob”, even before any looting or violence started.

And thanks a lot SCOTUS, for deciding that we didn’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore because America’s racial problems are behind us. They aren’t.

Let’s close with a quote from William O. Douglas about oppression:

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air–however slight–lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

What’s Erbil Got to do With It?

David Brooks:

We are now living in what we might as well admit is the Age of Iraq. The last four presidents have found themselves drawn into that nation because it epitomizes the core problem at the center of so many crises: the interaction between failing secular governance and radical Islam.

While Lawrence of Arabia said “on to Aqaba”, President Obama says, “on to Erbil”.

From the 2-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Steve Coll, writing in The New Yorker:

To the defense of Erbil: this was the main cause that drew President Obama back to combat in Iraq last week, two and a half years after he fulfilled a campaign pledge and pulled the last troops out.

What Happened to Our Free Press?

We have a free press, right? That freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state. With respect to government information, governments routinely distinguish between materials that are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on a classification process that protects some information from disclosure due to the information’s relevance to protecting the national interest.

Washington is making more and more information, including some that is decades-old, inaccessible except to journalists who are “trusted”. That is journalists who the Administration or an agency have invested time and effort to determine that they will put the best possible spin on whatever they are fed.

In the past, the term “access journalism” meant giving exclusive interviews (or leaks) to pet reporters who had established that they won’t bite the hand that feeds them good stories. From the perspective of the government, this is a virtuous circle: Not only can they reward reporters who play ball, but over time, these correspondents become influential, by virtue of having an inside information advantage.

But there are darker ways this game is played. Some agencies block information from journalists or historians who prefer to report rather than to take dictation. The American Historical Association has an article about government agencies using the courts to keep secrets secret:

In a two-to-one decision the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in May 2014, agreed with the CIA that a volume of its…history of the 53-year-old Bay of Pigs Invasion could “confuse the public” and should thus be kept secret.

Huh? What are we supposed to be confused about? That the invasion failed? That the CIA set it up? Or maybe that the Agency was flat-assed wrong about the popular anti-Castro uprising that was supposed to be triggered by the invasion?

To win the legal argument, the CIA successfully convinced the two Judges that any document the agency deems “predecisional” (dealing with file information developed prior to a decision to act) can be withheld permanently. To do this, they rely on the CIA Information Act of 1984. This bill was a deal made to speed the CIA’s processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests while protecting information unlikely to be released because of national security concerns. But today, the CIA doesn’t abide by Congress’s intent, it routinely refuses to search its operational files – in particular, files which have been subject to an investigation. As an example, Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations (JSOC) Commander who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, knew about this transparency black hole when he ordered the FOIA-complying Department of Defense to purge its computers of all files on the Navy SEALs raid on bin Laden and send them to the CIA, where the Operational Files Exemption would keep them “safe” from search and review for release.

If our society wants to maintain even a veneer of democracy, we have to change the CIA Information Act, which keeps important information from the public. It seems it is used to preserve the image of the CIA and shield it from criticism, as much as it is used to protect national security.

A second dark way in which the game is played is demonstrated by the Obama administration’s pursuit of more criminal leak investigations than all previous administrations combined. The Institute for Public Accuracy reported yesterday that 14 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have issued individual statements voicing support for New York Times reporter James Risen, who continues to refuse to name his source for information about a bungled CIA operation in Iran that appeared in his 2006 book State of War. The DOJ is considering whether to attempt to force Risen to testify against his sources.

Third, the White House occasionally threatens reporters about their methods of obtaining information. Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly lectured the WaPo after they reported that Obama aides had early warning of a potential border crisis, and for citing an anonymous sources. At the same time, other reporters present at the lecture pointed out a familiar email that had just arrived in their inboxes: an invitation to a phone call with anonymous White House officials:

.@PressSec condemns anonymous sources. Just arriving in email: White House invitation to reporters for call with anonymous admin officials.

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 21, 2014

All of this is designed by the Administration’s spinners to produce cover stories. Because there’s always a cover story, even if it’s “nothing happened.” Cover stories are built like onions, one layer behind another, a fallback story behind every cover story.

Anti-transparency is tantamount to anti-accountability. Criticism is the only known antidote for error.

By contrast, in a competitive arena like business (or sports), ruthless postmortems, particularly of failures, often happen in public. They are believed to be necessary for improving performance.

But in Ultimate Politics, Washington can’t tolerate critiques, so they plan to be even less transparent. Forget the Constitution, folks.

The Crook Who Took America off the Gold Standard

Forty years ago on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace rather than face Impeachment. Millions of words have been written about his crimes and misdemeanors. Some efforts at rehabilitation of his image occurred over the last week.

One thing we shouldn’t forget is that Nixon took us off the gold standard.

When Nixon entered office in 1969, America had been part of the international monetary system known as Bretton Woods since the end of World War II. Bretton Woods committed the US to backing every dollar overseas with gold. Thus, foreign countries had the right to exchange their dollars at the rate of $35 per ounce. All other currencies were fixed to the dollar, and the dollar was pegged to gold.

Nixon appointed Arthur Burns as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1970, with instructions to ensure easy access to credit since Nixon was going to run for reelection in 1972, and wanted a growing economy to help his case. Bloomberg Business Week says he gave Burns some blunt instructions: “You see to it, no recession”.

Despite Nixon’s instructions to Burns, the US went into recession in 1970, triggering a rise in unemployment to 6% (imagine that!), which was the highest level since the Korean War. The recession should have curbed inflation, but it didn’t. Burns was stumped. Business Week quotes Burns’ diary:

What the boys around the White House fail to see…is that the country now faces an entirely new problem—sizable inflation in the midst of recession…The rules of economics are not working the way they used to. Prices were going up even when factories stood idle—a seeming refutation of the economic rules.

Despite growing inflation, Nixon pressured Burns to further loosen monetary policy, driving even more inflation. Domestic inflation was mirrored overseas. Foreign governments bought dollars to continue their growing exports to the US, leaving their central banks filled with greenbacks. Meanwhile, America’s gold holdings dwindled to $10 billion, about half its 1960 level.

The gold standard now existed in name only, since foreign banks held far more dollars than the US held in gold at $35/ounce. This left the US dollar vulnerable to a run.

In 1971, Nixon appointed John Connally as Treasury Secretary. Connally asked the White House financial team for options to control inflation and solve the possible run on the dollar, while keeping the domestic economy growing. Burns wanted price controls; he also thought the US should devalue the dollar against gold (that is, raise the gold price above $35). Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs Paul Volcker believed this would be ineffectual, as other countries would simply devalue their currencies by the same percentage. Volcker thought the US should temporarily halt gold-dollar convertibility.

On August 12, 1971 Britain demanded that the US guarantee $750 million. The next day, Nixon summoned his advisers to Camp David to agree on a plan. The plan had two essential points. First, America would stop converting dollars to gold. Second, to combat inflation, US wages and prices would be frozen for 90 days.

On August 15, 1971 Nixon announced the plan that unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the 25-year Bretton Woods system to an end. This was called the “Nixon Shock”. The gold standard was abandoned, and the previously fixed exchange rates of the world’s major currencies began to float.

Many conservatives argue that we should return to a gold standard. Would that help or hinder the world economy?

A terrific economic history of the Great Depression is the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World” by Liaquat Ahamed. Ahamed says that the gold standard was the principal cause of the depression. His thesis is that tying the amount of currency a country has in circulation to the amount of gold it holds becomes a strait jacket. The problem is that if you have a gold standard, your money supply is fixed by the amount of gold available. When economic activity exceeds the value of a country’s gold holdings, trade and economic growth are stifled, or you devalue your gold, causing inflation.

Of course, because of Bretton Woods, you couldn’t devalue your gold. So Nixon, an economic conservative, took two unthinkable steps in order to get re-elected. He implemented wage and price controls, and ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold.

Taking the world off the gold standard has facilitated the unprecedented economic growth of the past 40 years, since trade has grown much faster than the growth in world’s physical stock of gold.

Nixon’s price controls didn’t do much. The Consumer Price Index rose 4.4% percent in 1971, and 3.1% in 1972. When the controls were phased out in 1973, inflation rose to 6.2%. It was a shocking 11% in 1974.

So, as in all things Nixonian, there was a little good along with a lottta bad.

When Nixon said the words “I will therefore resign”, it felt to the Wrongologist that years of anti-war protesting had come to fruition. Ford, our first appointed President, then promptly pardons Nixon, and the merriment was stopped dead in its tracks.