Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

socratic-form-microscopy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#21

Post by CobrastanJorji »

philwelch wrote: post #17
smacktoward wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very strange that losing a Presidential general election is seen as the end of a political career when in years past, candidates like Bryan, Stevenson, or Dewey were still seen as viable. It's true, but it's worth noting that while in modern times losing is generally a career-ender for candidates it is much less so for the operatives behind the scenes, some of whom spend their whole careers cycling from one lo…

I can't find a simple list of his eight losing campaigns. I can see that he worked for Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000, McGovern in 1972, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Bob Kerrey in 1992, and both Gephardt and Dukakis in 1988, but that only adds up to seven. It turns out he also worked on Ed Muskie's campaign in 1972. To be fair, though, between the years of 1972 and 2004, the only two winning Democratic candidates were Jimmy Car…

That's not "to be fair," that makes it so much worse! Between 1972 and 2016, he supported 8 losing Democratic campaigns and did not support any of the 3 winning Democratic campaigns? That's an extraordinary losing streak!

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#22

Post by jcranmer »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #4

According to Wikipedia and it's citations, William J. Bryan was satirized as the Cowardly Lion by L. Frank Baum in "The Wizard of Oz".

No.

The Wizard of Oz as an extended allegory for bimetallism was a theory proposed by Littlefield in the 60s, and it's been pretty much thoroughly debunked by literary scholars who point out that the characters are essentially common character tropes from 1890s literature, and biographers who pointed out that it's completely contrary to the views that Baum himself held.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#23

Post by notahacker »

wutbrodo wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this really reductive? Interest rates and inflation are intimately linked.

The dynamic he's describing is about inflation relative to its expected value at the time of the deal. If you expect inflation to avg X% over the course of the loan and it ends up being so, then it's factored into the nominal rate of the loan and neither of the situations he describes come to pass. It's also mainly applicable for fixed rate loans only. So yea, it's pretty reductive.

And today's monetary policy is focused targeting predictable inflation rates over a period of time, which actually makes estimating it for credit purposes much more predictable than in the gold standard era, when it was zero with massive variance

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#24

Post by anonymous5133 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #14

I find the "Free Silver" movement fascinating because it sheds a light on how much we take our current economy for granted. Before I started to read about economics on my own I heard many times about the evils of easy credit and inflation but never had I heard about the problems of deflation and scarce money.

Yup and thankfully now we have so many different money systems that one can decide where to keep their value. People need not keep cash under the mattress if they dont want to. You can hold scarce assets that appreciate over time and only hold inflationary fiat when you need to purchase something. Thus you will never be pressured to spend all your money because most of your "money" isnt being held in inflationary assets.

We are told that inflation is good because it encourages spending but i would argue that such an effect is being dimished because many deflationary assets are traded on liquid markets.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#25

Post by apo »

Steko wrote: post #16
apo wrote: post #11

The dispute over bimetallic currency is now more than a hundred years old and has been made entirely moot by the floating US dollar and the post-Bretton Woods international monetary order. Setting aside the technical detail (gold vs. silver), the debate was really over hard vs. soft money. The issue is as relevant today as it was in the 1800s. Hard (scarce, gold) money policies favor lenders, who care very much about…

Moderate inflation is easily factored into repayment terms. What inflation penalizes is keeping your money under your mattress. This creates demand to use money now which creates economic activity. > a lot of the interest in Bitcoin is a direct reaction to decades of soft-money policies by the world's governments Bitcoin came from and was nurtured by monetary cranks but they are a small fraction of why people are int…

Moderate inflation is easily factored into repayment terms.

Constant inflation is easily factored in. But inflation varies greatly depending on prevailing conditions. The ruling party has an incentive to push for inflationary policies to stimulate short-term economic activity, leading to bouts of inflation that can wreck lenders over the long term.

What inflation penalizes is keeping your money under your mattress.

Inflation also punishes prudent investors - the kind who save for retirement.

Rising inflation leads to asset bubbles as pre-retirees seek to avoid being destroyed by inflation. Stocks without earnings and real estate, for example. They all get pushed up to ridiculous levels in the name of chasing return to avoid getting clobbered by inflation.

Not to mention the harmful ecological consequences of inflationary policies that encourage consumption over saving.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#27

Post by philwelch »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #21
philwelch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a simple list of his eight losing campaigns. I can see that he worked for Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000, McGovern in 1972, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Bob Kerrey in 1992, and both Gephardt and Dukakis in 1988, but that only adds up to seven. It turns out he also worked on Ed Muskie's campaign in 1972. To be fair, though, between the years of 1972 and 2004, the only two winning Democratic candidates were Jimmy Car…

That's not "to be fair," that makes it so much worse! Between 1972 and 2016, he supported 8 losing Democratic campaigns and did not support any of the 3 winning Democratic campaigns? That's an extraordinary losing streak!

He retired before 2008, so Obama doesn't count. He worked for one of Clinton's primary opponents back when Clinton himself was a dark horse candidate, and he actually resigned from Carter's 1976 campaign after ten days, writing to the future President, "I am not sure what you believe in, other than yourself." So it basically boils down to, "he never worked for Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton".

You could tell a similar story for any Democratic strategist with an overlapping career. Tad Devine worked for the failed campaigns of Mondale 84, Dukakis 88, Kerrey 92, Gore 00, Kerry 04, and Sanders 16. (He also worked in Ukraine on Viktor Yanukovych's winning 2010 Presidential campaign, alongside Paul Manafort. Small world.)

Also, if you work for a successful Presidential election campaign, you end up working in the White House, e.g. George Stephenapolous, Karl Rove, David Plouffe, David Axelrod, and Steve Bannon.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#28

Post by philwelch »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #24
DubiousPusher wrote: post #14

I find the "Free Silver" movement fascinating because it sheds a light on how much we take our current economy for granted. Before I started to read about economics on my own I heard many times about the evils of easy credit and inflation but never had I heard about the problems of deflation and scarce money.

Yup and thankfully now we have so many different money systems that one can decide where to keep their value. People need not keep cash under the mattress if they dont want to. You can hold scarce assets that appreciate over time and only hold inflationary fiat when you need to purchase something. Thus you will never be pressured to spend all your money because most of your "money" isnt being held in inflationary ass…

That's kind of the point, right? Inflation encourages spending, but it also encourages investment, and your saved money can be invested in stocks and bonds, which also stimulate economic growth more than being stuffed in a mattress.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#29

Post by walshemj »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #14

I find the "Free Silver" movement fascinating because it sheds a light on how much we take our current economy for granted. Before I started to read about economics on my own I heard many times about the evils of easy credit and inflation but never had I heard about the problems of deflation and scarce money.

The crash of property prices in Japan recently is an example of deflation in action and its long lasting negative effects.

Re: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech

#30

Post by zb »

apo wrote: post #11

The dispute over bimetallic currency is now more than a hundred years old and has been made entirely moot by the floating US dollar and the post-Bretton Woods international monetary order. Setting aside the technical detail (gold vs. silver), the debate was really over hard vs. soft money. The issue is as relevant today as it was in the 1800s. Hard (scarce, gold) money policies favor lenders, who care very much about…

It's not like there was no inflation in the gold standard era. It's just that inflation wasn't under anybody's political control - I guess if there was a gold rush you had a lot of inflation and if there wasn't you didn't.

The free silver movement was a political attempt to redistribute money from one group (lenders) to another group (borrowers, but specifically farmers) by deliberately causing a one-off burst of inflation. The original goldbugs opposed it (correctly, as the author points out) for that reason. Bryan supported it because he knew it would win him the votes of those who would benefit.

The same is not true of modern fiat currencies, which are for the most part managed quasi-independently with the goal of a relatively constant low, but non-zero, rate of inflation. This is better than either the gold standard or the free silver situation (both of which involved large bursts of inflation at unpredictable times), since the inflation rate can be priced in to interest rates.

It is possible to maintain a principled objection to this on the grounds that the political consensus could break down and we could start manipulating inflation for political reasons again. I'm glad we have people who worry about that, but I don't feel the need to join them.

I have a feeling that the ratio of 'principled objection' to 'economically illiterate' is, uh, not that high though.

Post reply on HN