Two weeks ago marked the 60th anniversary of a prescient essay (pdf) promoting gold as redeemable money. It was written by Howard Buffett, father of the famed investor, Warren.
Several years ago Joseph Stromberg wrote an interesting biography about Howard, a four-term congressman of the Old Right. While many libertarians laud him for his defense of free-markets and personal liberties, his foreign policy views also make for a laudatory remembrance.
Among others was his insistence on discovering who was responsible for instigating the Korean civil war. This is a germane topic that as Lew recently pointed out, still lives in the nightmares of the survivors of the autocrat Syngman Rhee.
[This deserves a much longer write up but suffice to say, when the North offered up several treaties Rhee refused to take part and is suspected to have struck first in the summer of '50. In fact, the South led by Rhee never signed the armistice as he alone wanted to rule all of the peninsula.]
Via David Schatz and Karen De Coster
See also: A History of Occupations
Good as Gold by Liberty Watch magazine
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This begs the question: Does Warren Buffet have traditional family ties to his father’s wisdom? If he understands the importance of a sound money, like his father before him, then it would be honorable of him to speak out so others can be educated.
sad that whilst warren’s business acumen is not matched by economic sense. he and soros do immense damage to the cause of liberty.
but then it’s a popular misconception that ability in money-making is a sign of great wisdom and knowledge. mises and rothbard didn’t rake it in, and yet marx was a wealthy man (at times!).
i refer to buffet jnr’s support for higher taxation (capital gains and inheritance, from memory).
Soros and Warren Buffett are probably more into the “elitist mindset” than giving much thought to what would be good in general. The super-rich have nothing against the inheritance tax, they have trust funds or can hide their money off-shore if they need. Social democracy is only good for taxing the middle class and giving the loot to the poor. Taxation doesn’t really affect the rich. See e.g. Brazil, Mexico or perhaps Sweden for examples of the elite using social democracy to keep the middle class from climbing the social ladder.
Newson,
Buffett and Sorros’ economic position is akin to the reason the so-called Fabian Society held its position.
“The super-rich have nothing against the inheritance tax, they have trust funds or can hide their money off-shore if they need. ”
In Buffet’s case it’s worse than that. Nobody has profited from the inheritance tax more than Berkshire Hathaway. They get you coming or going. Their “estate planning” services make billions by helping people shield their income from the death tax. AND BH has a nice cottage industry of buying distressed family businesses who had to sell at 50 cents on the dollar to pay their massive tax bills when the founder dies (obviously these people should have used one of Warren’s insurance companies to plan his estate and this never would have happened!). Buffet’s fundamental investment strategy is to buy solid companies at a bargain price – the deah tax creates that bargain price. Berkshire’s portfolio has numerous examples, the biggest and most well known being Dairy Queen.
Buffet and Soros have been betting on the demise of the dollar for years, but for all the wrong reasons. Akin to believing the sun comes up every day because there is large greek god who lifts it up and carries it across the sky every day. The prediction is essentially right (although both lost billions betting aginst the dollar while the fed was raising the fed funds rate for 2 years) but the reasoning is all wrong, which means the predictions ultimately will falter.
Given that resolute anti-communism & qualified admiration of certain authoritarian regimes’ readiness to do, how so ever precipitately, cynically & expediently the west’s cold war dirty work, are often nigh all a sub-set of old rightists have to solace themselves re foreign affairs of the 1950s why was the author constrained to swipe so gratuitously at Rhee in a post on federal representative Howard Buffett’s admirable stand for the gold standard? is there any good reason for LewRockwell.com’s & mises.org’s insistence on holding cold war era non-western or at best nominally western anti-communist autocratic-authoritarian regimes to a high standard they could not have possibly met & which even if they could would have meant, well in advance, yielding & surrendering to communism? How so ever objectionable or offencive authoritarianism is, specially when it is plainly & obviously fascistic or at least fascist style, it is far preferable to communism & by God communists every where know it; too bad multitudes of old rightists & paleo-libertarians have conveniently forgot it. Pressing such an advantage early, firmly & consistently for all it was worth would have made the history of the last 60 years far different to the benefit of man kind–including the American republic which could have restored the gold standard, declared isolationism, repealed the new deal, abolished income taxes, quashed domestic subversion, quit the united nations & done every thing else that needed done to validate old rightism, including even forswearing further support to & approval of those mean autocracies that, per the vapid claims of myriads of pampered do-gooders, merely used anti-communism to justify their notionally unexcusable abuse & repression of subject peoples.
What many readers do not already know: in spring 1960 south Korea was rent by communist inspired “student” riots Rhee hesitated to neutralize effectively so in early 1961 this autocrat whose alleged egregious authoritarianism American “progressives” had spent the whole decade of the 1950s conspicuously deploring was ousted by a junto of army general officers for failing to be authoritarian enough.
The gold standard is the rightly favored monetary doctrine of smart arch conservatives; please forbear alienating them by slurring the memory of flawed foreign leaders who did their level best to oppose communist tyranny. What ever their sins they, unlike communists, were content to keep their regrettable despotisms domestic & only imposed them imprimis due to the erraticism, puerility, excitability, obtuseness & consequent susceptability to communist blandishments of the peoples whereof they had charge.
steven smith says:
“How so ever objectionable or offencive authoritarianism is, specially when it is plainly & obviously fascistic or at least fascist style, it is far preferable to communism & by God communists every where know it…”
but ain’t that the slipperiest of slopes? i mean fascism in italy was a popular movement, whose raison d’etre was as a bulwark against socialism. whilst the fascists and communists managed to comfortably accomodate the molotov-ribbentrop pact, both idealogies were united in their dogged and merciless pursuit of libertarians. it’s always seemed to me that the similarities between fascism and communism far outweigh their differences, which are nuanced at best.
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