(Un)happy Birthday, Fiat Money

[Darius871]

Yay, zakuHL's back!

[Egbert]

I don't know much about money, but fiats are awesome. Especially convertible ones. I can see both sides of the argument though, since fiats looked much better back in the 70's than they do today. I don't see much point of modern non-convertible fiats.

Aeson speaks the truth.

I drove a Fiat in the late 1970's soi I speak from personal experience.

[VetLegion]

HalfLotus are you regularly following mises.org? I'll probably be at the Vienna
summit in September, let me know if you're there.

WRT fiat money, it seems ugly from US perspective, but being from a smaller
country, I have a bit different opinion on that than mainstream Austrian economists.

You see, in our (small) countries, fiat money is democratic. It was not really
imposed in a conspiracy. That is, people want it, even as they know all the
pros and cons. Small countries are rather nimble and agile politically, compared
to big USA. And there are approximately 200 of us small ones. Together we
constitute a kind of a "natural experiment" wrt different monetary policies.

If it were really beneficial to go on a gold standard, small countries could do it
easily. But it doesn't make sense... for one, rising gold prices would kill our
exports. We'd need to contract in fiat currencies anyway, like the Swiss are
doing now paying workers in euros.

If the US goes back to gold, by all means, let's all do it. But doing it alone would
be suicide.

[Dinner]

The OP is completely retarded. Here's a great blog if anyone is interested in why the whole gold standard nonsense is nonsense: http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/...r-dummies.html

[dannubis]

Aeson speaks the truth.

I drove a Fiat in the late 1970's soi I speak from personal experience.

All FIATs I drove were terrible terrible cars.

[Aeson]

Were they convertibles from the 70's?

[dannubis]

No, crap from the 90ies