Most of the "New World" silver and gold that
entered Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries
pretty promptly left Europe during the 17th and
18th centuries in a vastly increased trade with
India, China and the Far East in exchange for
their cottons, porcelain, silks, spices, sugar
and opium (we had little to offer them other than
gold and silver). The European wars of the 18th
century (with mercenary armies rather than
conscripted ones) were, if anything, more limited
than they might have been due to a shortage of
gold coinage. The wars of the 19th and 20th
centuries (with increasingly sized artillery
regiments with increasing press-ganging and
conscription with much lower average soldier-pay
than previous highly-paid mercenaries) were paid
for by printing money because there was
insufficient gold and silver for governments to
borrow. Because governments then discovered that
money-printing was an easy way out, they have
kept to it ever since. And banks have been
enthusiastic supporters of this dodge because
they knew that however much credit they created,
governments would then have to print more and
more banknotes. That's why the US$ and the UK£
are worth less than 5% of what they were
pre-1914. And that's why we're in deep trouble
today with no hope of remedy until we
re-establish currencies on stable platforms --
and, furthermore, demote banks to the status of normal businesses.
Keith
At 06:05 25/06/2011, you wrote:
Ray wrote:
1515 when the gold from the new world began to flood Europe and
create almost everything that we consider important today as a
result of the pillage. A completely new identity emerged in
Europe with a blossoming of arts and culture in every nook and
cranny. I trace my teachers and can go back no further than the
16th century. They even call that "pre-prosperity time", the
dark ages that opened into the Age of Enlightened genocide, rape
and pillage. Yes it did change Europe and lead to a century of
carnage in the 20th century. Hundreds of millions dead but it
all began here with 100 million dead. History is just history.
You can't change it but you can understand cause and effect.
Well, let me expose my ignorance of finance here. (What, again? :-)
Europe was, AFAIUI, insulated or partitioned off from the pillage and
genocide itself, connected only by a tenuous thread of ship, military
and attendant exploiter adventurers. The blood and misery was in place
so distant that it might seem nearly mythical.
So from the European system as a whole, money was just being created
out of thin air. A fleet of ships filled with gold or silver bars,
even after a few were lost to (yes) Pirates of the Carribean, was so
valuable relative to the capital and operational costs (to European
monarchs and investors, if not to native Americans) that the cost was
inconsequential.
That appears to me to be approximately the equivalent of printing
money. The cost of the press is inconsquential.
In the 17th c. international bankers were getting involved and I'm
guessing that some or much of the financial stream was diverted into
loans, typically to monarchs to support armies. I'm further guessing
that in the 16th c. that money was simply *spent* by the monarchs and
investors who sponsored the trade.
Maybe I have that somewhat wrong but the upshot seems to have been
that having free money to spread around, albeit destined for less than
praiseworthy purposes, financed a century or two of enlightenment,
increasing prosperity, improved living conditions and even maybe the
nascent rise of the middle class.
Maybe the Fed should lose the loan/debt thing and just print [for
hi-tech values of "print", of course] a lot of money and give it away
or spend it on bridges, dams, urban sewage treatment, mortage relief
and the like. Or is that what Paul Krugman is already saying?
In ignorance,
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/06/
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