Why did most ancient civilizations debase their currency over the centuries?

Donna just because it’s something you don’t agree with doesn’t make it “a remarkable narrow view”.

The fact of the matter is that Germany and France have no right to complain about little things like not getting their physical gold back and only being given paper when it’s taken into consideration that America was forced to give up a lot of our own blood & gold because of Europe’s mistakes.

My knowledge of Ancient coins may be limited but I certainly know what I’m talking about when it comes to World War 2 and Harvard professor (and British citizen) Niall Ferguson agrees with me.

If people with Ph.Ds believe the same thing that I do than it’s certainly a valid opinion.

 

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@Ryro, of course I can't be sure of anything because I haven't met her, but based on our exchange of a few private messages, I believe that Blake is who she says she is. I do not believe she is one of our old trolls, or even a new troll!

Conversely, @Gam3rBlake, I am very confident that Ryro is niether homophobic nor transphobic.

I do strongly disagree with Blake's statements about a Germany that would have been the master of Europe not being a threat to the USA or its interests, and with the idea that the USA didn't emerge from the war in a far more powerful position than before it -- after paying far less of a price than any of the other major combatants. The "narrowness" has to do with her understanding of the word "threat." But all of that has nothing to do with her identity.

All of this is wholly apart from the issue of what happened or should have happened with gold in the 1970s. Not something I care about.

 

What I said is the truth.

It sounds like you just don’t want to believe it because it clashes with your own views of what happened.

However like I said in my previous post: There are Harvard professors with Ph.Ds who agree with everything I said.

You’ll forgive me for not dismissing the advice of reputable academics because some people on the Internet disagree with them.

Interestingly I find it’s usually Europeans themselves who refuse to acknowledge that their mistakes caused WW2 and that America saved them.

Even the Soviet Union would’ve been crushed by the Nazis without American aid such as weapons, Jeep’s, tanks, food, etc.,

The funny thing is that it’s a very recent belief. If you asked Europeans in the 1950s they would’ve gladly told you that America saved them.

But now with rising anti-Americanism taking place in Europe they don’t want to believe it anymore because they don’t want to feel indebted to America.

 

I didn’t say it wasn’t a threat to the USA’s national interest.

What I said, or meant to say, is that considering how much aid America lent to Europe to stop the Nazis: France and Germany would look silly complaining about not getting a little bit of physical gold and being given paper instead.

That is what this whole point was about. It’s about whether America should’ve given France and Germany their gold back and whether it’s right that Nixon gave them US Dollars instead.

As far as I’m concerned when all of America’s contributions in WW2 are considered it’s only fair that America keep that gold as reparations for the huge costs that America had to pay to fight against Naziism.

 

If you truly aren't trying to troll, I'd advise you to consider stopping the political discussion. This has wandered very far from your original question.

 

In substance, that's pretty much exactly what you said: you called the war against Hitler "something that wasn’t our problem and didn’t benefit us but rather was purely a humanitarian act to help Europe."

In any event, I suggest that we drop the discussion.

 

I will never bow down to transphobes and people who come to post messages of hate.

However I will redirect your message towards those trolls so they get your advice and stop trolling my posts.

You might want to tag them in your message though so they get it.

But I’m guessing you meant for this message to be for them since it makes no sense addressing it to me.

If someone makes a post and others come and hijack it your message should be towards the people who hijacked the post not the person who wrote the original post.

 

What I meant is that Hitler was a problem created by Europeans not by Americans.

America had to spend a fortune before that European created threat became a global threat.

Had it not been for Hitler, America wouldn’t have had to spend all that money & blood to stop him.

So Germany & France really don’t have any good reason to complain about their gold not being returned.


The whole discussion was about whether Nixon was right or wrong in not returning the gold and my belief is that Nixon was right and that due to WW2 that gold rightfully belonged to America as compensation for all the gold America had to spend to stop a problem Europe created.

But yes let’s end this discussion.

 

I'm usually not one to ever block anyone on this board, after reading the multitude of inane ramblings you've crapped in this thread; you might be the 1st.

First off, the United States will eternally owe France for its very existence. If it weren't for their help during the Revolutionary War, we might still be flying the Union Jack(like our friends to the North did up until 1965; or like the Aussies and Kiwis still do).

Your "facts" are far from it kiddo. I've forgotten more than you will ever know about the European theater during WWII, and the U.S.'s role as one contributor to the total Allied cause of fighting fascism. The U.S.'s involvement may have played a tipping point in the European theater, but by no means did they defeat the Axis alone. The Russians paid a much much higher price, and if it weren't for their efforts on the Eastern Front; the war (even with the U.S.'s role) would have lasted much longer than it did. The Brits also played a crucial part in the Battle over Britain, by crippling the Luftwaffe and allowing the Allies control of the skies. Speaking of the Canadians and Aussies, they too stormed the beaches at Normandy and Sicily. The French resistance and the Italian Partisans also sacrificed for the effort in their own homelands...

Look, I'm done schooling you. Take your "facts" and shove 'em.

 

I'm not saying that I share that view, but Canadian Noble Laureate Robert Mundell, once wrote that the US Federal Reserve created Hitler. I'm sure he deliberately overstated the case, but his argument is based on the fact, that the Fed's policies of the 1920s created or contributed significantly to the Great Depression, which in turn resulted in bank failures and mass unemployment in Germany, as a result of which extremist parties like Hitler's NSDAP, who had little support previously, suddenly became popular. Again, I'm sure that this is a gross simplification, but when it comes to crime and punishment, history is rarely black and white.

 

US domestic choices about the currency, the interest rates and debt issue influence heavily foreign economies, since the US$ has been the main tender for obligations and value reserve worldwide. Of course domestic policies (of every state) only partially take into consideration their effects abroad. I think this is far to give evidence that the FED created Hitler. Multilateralism was born to discuss divergent interests between nation and if possibly try and find median solutions. That should avoid (as it happened so far in Europe after the EU institution) nations use the war to solve commercial and economic divergencies.

 

Nixon's gold shock of 1971 had nothing really to do with WW2. Also this was not about "returning" gold to Germany, France or Britain. Instead, during WW2 massive amounts of gold had shifted to the US, because US productive capacity was undamaged and the US sold its goods against gold.

At the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the US proposed to make the US-Dollar the global reserve currency, which in itself is a priviledge worth trillions (which is why the Brits were opposed).

In return, the US government promised to back the dollar with gold at a fixed rate for countries prepared to peg their currencies to the dollar. In the 1960s, the US government over-issued dollars to finance the Vietnam-War and large social programms.

When France in particular realised that, President Charles de Gaule demanded the conversion of its dollar reserves into gold. Nixon feared that all gold would leave the US and reneged on the promise. This was the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the beginning of our era of free-floating currencies with independent central banks.

 

That is true of course. I think what Mundell was getting at is this: In the late 1920s, the Fed was still a young and inexperienced institution that wielded enormous power. By sheer coincidence two of its most important policy-makers/advisors (one being Economist Allyn Young, the other being Fed chairman Benjamin Strong) died just when the Great Depression hit.

Without these very capable people at the helm, the Fed took some very unfortunate decicisions, which made a bad situation worse and contributed to or even caused the famous bank failures that shocked Austria (Viennese Creditanstalt) and Germany into depression in 1931 and which gave Hitler a significant push to power.

Of course, it was not just the Fed's doing. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs did their part to plunge the world economy into deep depression. In Germany the middle class was wiped out for the second time in 10 years (the first time being the deflation of 1923).

Robert Mundell (Noble Prize Acceptance speech):
"Had the price of gold been raised in the late 1920’s, or, alternatively, had the major central banks [Federal Reserve and Bank of England] pursued policies of price stability instead of adhering to the gold standard, there would have been no Great Depression, no Nazi revolution and no World War II."


Isn't it amazing to think that had Allyn Young not died prematurely at the age of 52, he may have prevented the Great Depression, the Nazi revolution and WWII.
Hitler's rise to power had many reasons, but without the Great Depression that was caused to a significant extend by a blundering Fed and the Hoover administration, his movement would likely never have extended much beyond Munich beer cellars.
We will never know of course, but we should be aware of historical accidents and unintended consequences, when we make sweeping statements about guilt and punishment.

 

I understand that and that it has nothing to with WW2.

But what I’m saying is that it shouldn’t be perceived as Nixon or the US pulling a sleezy move or victimizing other countries like Russia did with Spain’s gold (see: “Moscow Gold” for more info).

I’m saying that the least France and Germany could do is leave that gold in the US and accept the dollars when one considers how much money the US spent fighting the Nazis in Germany and helping to liberate France from them.

I mean in the end it should’ve been viewed as Germany & France leaving their physical gold with the US to help out America in return for all the help America had lended them in the past.

Besides it’s not even like the US just kept the gold and left them with squat like Russia did to Spain.

They did get US Dollars which could’ve been used to buy gold on the open market if they really wanted physical gold that badly.

There was nothing stopping them from taking those US Dollars and buying all the gold bullion they could afford from bullion dealers all over the world.

For example if I am Germany and the government took my gold and paid me US Dollars for it I could simply go to JM Bullion and use those US Dollars to buy my gold back. Gold is a fungible commodity so it doesn’t matter that it’s not the exact same gold. If the US government took 2 of my 1oz American Gold Eagles and I used the money they gave me to buy 2x 1oz Gold Maple Leaves I still have my 2 oz of gold back in the end.

In summary: What Nixon did shouldn’t be perceived as theft from France & Germany or as the US taking advantage of them or victimizing them. It should be seen as an economic policy by Nixon to maintain global financial stability.

 

This is not going to go over well with many people but the old Soviet Union, our Russian allies, not only suffered the greatest losses of the European war but they also inflicted a little over 80% of the casualties that the Wehrmacht suffered in that war. It was the Eastern Front that ate up Germany's resources. If there is anyone that should be given the credit that is due for its role in WW II, it was not Private Ryan but Private Ivanovich who pulled it off.

 

Well, it was a promise broken and it certaintly didn't create financial stability. Also, the problem was not Nixon's gold shock, but the over-issuance of dollar bills in the 1960s. The over-issuance had bought temporary economic prosperity and paid for a war. War is almost always the reason for the over-issuance (debasement) of money, to come back to the original question.
With the USD's status as global reserve currency, the US was able to shift parts of the eventual costs to others. Nobody blames them, but it wasn't exactly the nicest thing to do either and there is no need to justify it ex post with services provided in WW2.

 

Back to the original question -

1) Were Greek coins actually debased? I know that the Attic standard was mostly abandoned in favor of lighter local standards (e.g. the ~14g Egyptian tet, the ~11g Cistophorus) but on the whole I didn't think that the purity was debased or weight reduced to inflate the currency supply?

2) One interesting observation is that the various Persian empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian) saw surprisingly little inflation, given how tumultuous their history often was. Perhaps they relied more heavily on their ability to buy mercenaries from abroad during times of war? Even the early Islamic dynasties didn't inflate their coinage until about the time of the Mongol takeover, although that has more of a religious basis.

3) Similarly, although the Ban Liang is a classic tale of fiscal mismanagement, China holds the distinction of making the Wu Zhu so uniformly that many types cannot be attributed with certainty to any specific time frame between their inception in 118 BC until their replacement with Kai Yuan Tongbao in 628.

 

I have studied that subject very much. I have read up a lot on lend lease etc. and have come to a middle ground conclusion that the USA did the USSR an enormous favour with all the aid. Inasmuch as @Gam3rBlake thinks that American blood was spilled needlessly we actually bleed a lot more butter, fuel, trucks, and aircraft. The Soviets gave their lives in huge numbers - about inestimable in fact. US aid was significant, but it was not the majority of resources being expended by the USSR as a lot of American equipment was not suitable for conditions especially weather on the territory of the USSR.

I do believe had America not been dragged into the war with the declaration of war by Hitler and Mussolini on 12 December that the USSR, Great Britain and all the sundry groups in Jugoslavija, Poland, Greece etc would have eventually prevailed over the fascists - but only after a titanic struggle that would have cost many millions more lives and probably dragged the USA in eventually anyhow.

Instead of saying one gave more than the other - it is far more realistic to be thankful that we all gave some and that some gave all to defeat the greatest threat to mankind in quite sometime.

 

Just mentioning @blake and @Gam3rBlake are not the same

 

Thanks; I forgot to put the whole name. I will correct it. Although I sincerely hope the discussion is over at this point. Arguments like this one make me feel ill, even when I'm not really part of them. Call me a snowflake, but that's not why I'm here.