Search
In The New York Times today, Floyd Norris conjures up the unquiet ghost of Texas Congressman and Federal Reserve-hater Wright Patman in a column about similarly unquiet, if clearly alive, Fed-hater Ron Paul. You could see this coming; not to beat my own hollow chest, but I wrote about the inimitable Patman with the first populist stirrings four years ago. What Norris does well is elucidate the differences between Patman, who died in 1976 after the high tide of post-Watergate liberals swept into Congress and took away his perch running the House Banking committee, and the libertarian Paul. Both hated the Fed for its secrecy and what they viewed as its vast reach and power; both saw the central bank as a particularly pernicious outgrowth of economic freemasonry. But Patman wanted the Fed to loosen, to print money and to inflate; this position didn't do him much good in the '70s when inflation was raging and the economy was failing. Paul is a classic hard-money zealot. He believes the only true store of value exists in gold and silver, and he would like to replace paper money, the Fed and anything else that separates mankind from the metaphysical bedrock of monetary value.
What's interesting here is how these two Texans -- Patman and Paul -- represent extreme versions of two opposed notions in American history: loose money and hard, inflation and deflation, paper money and gold. This dispute most famously erupted in the great battles between silver (Democrats, famously William Jennings Bryan) and gold (Republicans) in the late 19th century. The opposing sides in that great battle, which remains mysterious to most students of American history, consisted of Western interests, which wanted the free mining of silver in order to inflate the economy and fuel development of vast tracts of land and the hard money gold-bugs of Wall Street and banking, which wanted to restrict the money supply. This was really an argument from self-interest. Indebted Western interests, built on agriculture and ranching, would see their debt fall in an inflationary climate. Wall Street at the time, a tight oligarchy, wanted to retain the value of its wealth. 
blog comments powered by Disqus
Bob Teitelman, editor in chief and a member of the company’s executive committee, is responsible for editorial operations of print and electronic products. Contact
NBGI Private Equity appointed food and drinks industry veteran Tim Kelly as a senior adviser. For other updates launch today's Movers & shakers slideshow.
Blackstone Real Estate and DDR divide 46 shopping centers in a $1.46 billion deal. More video
