Mish vs. Stalwart: Bernanke’s Class Lecture on Money Leads to After-School Blog Brawl

Lauren Lyster moderates a debate between Mike Shedlock and Joe Weisenthal, two bloggers who represent different sides of the ideological spectrum when it comes to gold, currency, and fiat money. Joe has attacked the gold standard in the past, and most recently in his article titled, “Ben Bernanke Murders the Gold Standard.” In his article, Joe attacks the gold standard for, what he believes, is its contribution to monetary and interest rate “volatility.” He also criticizes the wasted time and effort needed to extract the yellow metal from the ground, which ends up right back under ground in vaults. Mish, on the other hand, rips in to Joe’s argument in his own post titled “Ben Bernanke: Inflationaist Jackass, devoid of common sense, and clueless about trade, debt, history and gold.” One of Mish’s points is that “stability is destabilizing,” and that artificially dampening volatility only increases it in the long term. He also directly challenges Joe Weisenthal’s position on gold, and finds value in it as a way of restraining government spending.