Henry Hazlitt Predicted the Dollar's Endless Inflation And Destruction in the 1940's (and His Employer, the NY Times, Censored His Writing On That Topic.)
Posted by freedomforall 2 months, 2 weeks ago to Economics
Excerpt:
"In July of 1944, a year and some months before the official end to the Second World War, allied powers gathered at the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire to hammer out a new economic order that would dominate the world at war’s end.
The meeting alone expressed great confidence in a coming victory. They were not wrong.
As part of the new plan for the world, a new monetary system would take shape. It would be based in gold, with the dollar convertibility guaranteed at 1/35 an ounce. The right to convert would not be available to average people. It was something guaranteed by nation states and central banks alone, at least those allowed to participate.
In the early days of the conference, the New York Times (NYT) editorialized against the scheme. The pen behind the unsigned editorials was the great economist Henry Hazlitt, who would later gain fame for his book “Economics In One Lesson,” which became one of the best-selling economics books of the century. In fact, it still sells well today.
Hazlitt criticized the proposed new monetary system. He said that by making the dollar the world reserve currency, and guaranteeing convertibility into gold only by large trading nations, the new system could not last. This is because there was no mechanism to police nations’ fiscal and monetary policies. The new system would enable endless expansion of money and credit abroad without consequence. The United States would experience, eventually, a devastating gold outflow. At some point in the future, he predicted, the United States would have to suspend convertibility."
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Hazlitt's articles on this subject were compiled in a book From Bretton Woods To World Inflation.
The book can be read online at:
https://archive.org/details/frombrett...
(You may have to sign up to read it.)
"In July of 1944, a year and some months before the official end to the Second World War, allied powers gathered at the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire to hammer out a new economic order that would dominate the world at war’s end.
The meeting alone expressed great confidence in a coming victory. They were not wrong.
As part of the new plan for the world, a new monetary system would take shape. It would be based in gold, with the dollar convertibility guaranteed at 1/35 an ounce. The right to convert would not be available to average people. It was something guaranteed by nation states and central banks alone, at least those allowed to participate.
In the early days of the conference, the New York Times (NYT) editorialized against the scheme. The pen behind the unsigned editorials was the great economist Henry Hazlitt, who would later gain fame for his book “Economics In One Lesson,” which became one of the best-selling economics books of the century. In fact, it still sells well today.
Hazlitt criticized the proposed new monetary system. He said that by making the dollar the world reserve currency, and guaranteeing convertibility into gold only by large trading nations, the new system could not last. This is because there was no mechanism to police nations’ fiscal and monetary policies. The new system would enable endless expansion of money and credit abroad without consequence. The United States would experience, eventually, a devastating gold outflow. At some point in the future, he predicted, the United States would have to suspend convertibility."
------------------------------------------
Hazlitt's articles on this subject were compiled in a book From Bretton Woods To World Inflation.
The book can be read online at:
https://archive.org/details/frombrett...
(You may have to sign up to read it.)
