Untitled

edit

Ebert review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091209/REVIEWS/912099993

whole section removed without Edit Summary called "Ruppert's economic views", why?

edit

In the film, Ruppert critiques the idea of fractional reserves, leveraging, and fiat money, and in doing so, he seems to align himself with economic libertarians and proponents of the gold standard. Excessive leveraging, high risk, and low reserve ratios were among many of the causes of the Great Recession of 2008. However, mainstream economists and economic historians would point out that economic growth, the industrial revolution, and indeed, the modern world itself, would have been impossible without the risks implicit in leveraging and fractional reserves. A sophisticated banking system, replete with fractional reserves and risk-taking, was a major factor in countries transitioning from an agricultural to a modern, industrial economy. [1] [2] Moreover, the overwhelming majority of economic historians have pointed out that the gold standard - one of the alternatives of fiat money - contains numerous flaws. Historically, the gold standard has acted as a mechanism for spreading crippling deflation and prevented governments and central banks from enacting fiscal and monetary measures to provide price and employment stability.[3] [4] [5] In fact, the gold standard itself may have been one of the principal culprits that explains the severity and duration of the Great Depression of the 1930s.[6]

99.109.126.72 (talk) 03:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

  1. ^ Howard Bodenhorn, A History of Banking in Antebellum America: Financial Markets and Economic Development in an Era of Nation-building (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
  2. ^ Robert E. Wright, The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
  3. ^ Mouré, Kenneth (2002). The Gold Standard Illusion: France, the Bank of France, and the International Gold Standard, 1914-1939. Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ Temin, Peter (1991). Lessons from the Great Depression. MIT Press.
  5. ^ Kindleberger, Charles (1986). The World in Depression, 1929-1939. University of California Press.
  6. ^ Eichengreen, Barry (1996). Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939. Oxford University Press.