Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedZach Carter: evaluation
2 Dec 2020 Conversations with Tyler Zach Carter on the Life and Legacy of John Maynard Keynes
“To say not only that we will not meddle in the currency for domestic purposes, but we won’t interfere with international harmony and with the exchange of goods and ideas across different cultures — it’s very easy to see why people, from a progressive perspective, would see that as a good thing.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Zach Carter
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 2 Dec 2020
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Let me ask you the question Ezra [Klein] asked you: In the time of Keynes, especially the earlier years, why would anyone have defended the gold standard? Almost everyone did who thought about it, and I think it was tied up in a conception of liberalism and freedom that is very intuitively compelling to people who take enlightenment and liberalism seriously. If you believe that capricious sovereigns and governments shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of the people and direct the flows of international commerce for their own short-term gains and political preferences, then the gold standard is a way to put some brakes on the government. To say not only that we will not meddle in the currency for domestic purposes, but we won’t interfere with international harmony and with the exchange of goods and ideas across different cultures — it’s very easy to see why people, from a progressive perspective, would see that as a good thing. Why weren’t they just correct? Christina Romer has shown GDP volatility was not higher before the Fed, and if countries had stayed on the gold standard, they couldn’t have fought World War I. That sounds pretty good to me.…
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