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so there's a p.t. barnum side to this whole business, the enlightened self-interest of a huckster selling in this case bundled debt, so holes in the ground, as if they were the newest and most fabulous item to yet appear in all human history. but as is the case with any such scam, there has to be the collaboration of forces beyond the mere barker to legitimate the object that is the center of the scam. in this case ratings agencies endorsed the snake-oil salesman claims and for a while there was a considerable and lucrative trade in snake-oil involving much of the transnational banking and insurance sectors and states and investors---you know the range of the usual suspects in capitalism, the social groups or forces for which the rest of us carry shit when we sell our labor power for a wage. but whatever. it's a giant shell game.
the only register in which the gold standard could possibly figure as an explanation for anything at all here is as a psychological association in the minds of some observers who look at the endless shell game that is capital circulation and are disconcerted by the relativity of value, by the degree to which this really is a consensus reality and that not at the level of opinions of groups about phenomenon X or Y, but in the making of phenomenon X or Y in an ontological sense, bringing it into being as, as, a bundled collection of holes (debt) that is now a speculative device because the return rates can be magnified if they're viewed a certain way and backed a certain way and vouched for a certain way and put into motion in certain ways--and these devices WERE valuable until they weren't. the gold standard represents a kind of nostalgia for a view of the world in which such relativity was not possible (i use relativity and not relativism intentionally. just to say) apparent values lean on "real" value like meanings of words have always existed in god's mind. essentialism they call it.
as for bretton woods and keynes...blktour's post is factually wrong and dippin already took care of that so there we are.
but this is capitalism, folks. the shell game...it's what people do. they "add value" that way.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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