IOU USA WWI

For Labor Day, we went to the Liberty Memorial, to the World War I Museum after Bike 4 the Brain.

I hadn't been in years, but as cool as the museum was, I was more excited about the installation just south of the Memorial, IOU USA.

It's stationed, appropriately enough, right by the Federal Reserve building. I heard a bit on NPR today (9/21/11) about the Fed and how back in Volker's day they got threatening notes written on 2x4's sent by builders pissed off at Volker's policies.

It was then explained that this was part of why today, Bernanke holds press conferences to spin what he's doing in a positive light.

This was all presented with an underlying bias that the Fed is doing what is best for us all and the lack of transparency of the 1970s made people paranoid.

But transparency only goes so far. If I pick your pocket, or burglarize your home while you're away, is it worse than if I steal your shit right before your eyes?

The Federal Reserve system, really all central banks that impose a fiat currency on an economy, is the sort of thing that, if regular folks understand what they're doing, they'll line up outside the central bank with pitchforks and torches ready to hang some central banking assholes. Don't believe me? Ask anyone in Greece, or for that matter, the Eurozone.

I fear I'm being diatriabolical, but money is a marker of value — any effort to manipulate its value outside the market is fraudulent and, as a policy, doomed.

Anyway, hopefully our present crisis won't lead us to a world war or something idiotic like that. It seems far flung, I know, but the Memorial's refresher course on the causes of The Great War reminds me that a little stupid goes a long, long ways.

Complacently assuming another world war is impossible is like assuming that after 1929, they figured out what caused bubbles and made some rules so shit like that couldn't happen again in 2007. Which was exactly what my Daddy told me when I was growing up, that those speculators buying stocks on margins thinner than runway models taught us all a lesson and it'd never happen again.

It occurred to me, all the people who compare Obama to Jimmy Carter* as if that was the worst possible President to mimic, what if he's another Woodrow Wilson instead?

I'm not sure what my kids got out of the museum, or for that matter, the IOU USA installation. By the time we got to it, they were cranky and wanted to go home. When I was their age, it was common knowledge that at any moment the bomb could drop. And the guys in charge of one side apparently drank vodka at their desks of a morning.

As far as a little stupid going a long ways, I've wondered lately about the whole climate change question. I've never drunk that particular Monkey Wrench Gang flavored Kool-Aid, but there were folks in the mid-19th century who knew buffalo were about to go extinct who still saddled up to hunt the last few head. Are their modern equivalents driving crew cab pickups and SUVs to the Whole Foods to get a quart of organic milk?

*Jimmy Carter is my favorite ex-President. I'm not a fan of any modern president while in office, but at least Jimmy has made himself useful in retirement.