President Nixon's Economic Policy

The Gold Standard was the framework by which the value of cash was characterized in terms of gold, for which the money could be traded. The Gold Standard ended up being deserted in the Depression of the 1930s. Friedman felt that,“The gold standard is not feasible because the mythology and beliefs required to make it effective do not exist. This conclusion is supported not only by the general historical evidence referred to but also by the specific experience of the United States” ( “The Gold Standard:Please Stop”).Economists who contradict the Gold Standard may perceive what must be accomplished with a specific end goal to make a centrally controlled paper standard better than a decentralized Gold Standard. Milton Friedman poses the key question: "How can we establish a monetary system that is stable, free from irresponsible tinkering, and

The unemployment rate has dramatically increased over the last several months. This increase has created many complications for the American people. Although the United States economy has created over 7 million jobs, there is still a long way to go until the economy is back on track.

According to Tony McConnell, Nixon was the first president to consider a basic income and was the originator of the Environmental Protection Agency (28). Just like any other president, Nixon made his own policies and impacts on America. Another noteworthy topic of Nixon’s legacy is his foreign policy. McConnell notes that “it could only have been… [Nixon] to make common cause with the Chinese against the Soviet Union” (29). Nixon established nuclear arms control with Russia during the Cold War and establish the diplomatic openings with

Over the past five years, the federal government has also found it difficult to measure “improvement” in states. Currently, success is based in terms of job entry rate or increases over time in job entry rate, retention rate, and earnings gain. States may use quarterly unemployment insurance wage records, surveys, administrative records, or a combination of those data sources. States are given wide latitude in the sources of information they report. Also, to further distort the findings, there is no baseline data with which to make comparisons (Danziger, 2000).

Beginning with unemployment in the 2007-2009 recession, U.S. unemployment rates peaked at 10% as well as held 41 consecutive months at rates higher than eight percent (Lazear 1). The U.S. economy plummeted during this time; many attributed the shift to a large decrease in the number of employed workers. To be able to better understand the unemployment issue, we must first examine the form of unemployment faced by the U.S. economy. Many believe that the changes faced by the U.S. labor market

From what is supposedly being shown in papers and on the news the U.S. economy is currently concerned about unemployment, caused by the recession. This “current macroeconomic situation” is pardoning my language freaking a lot of individuals out, because some have no idea of how it is going to get better. The news/media is not painting us such a pretty picture of it, by calling it “this decade’s depression”. The unemployment rate is at 8.2% as of July 2012, whereas the average in 1948 was at 5.6%.

During his presidency, William McKinley had many domestic affairs to deal with. Amid the most significant issues, McKinley’s tariff legislation was a big one. Bimetallism was also an important issue. The McKinley administration went after an agreement that would include silver, as a standard European currency. McKinley didn’t like the idea so he began promoting a completely gold-based currency. In 1900, he signed the Gold Standard Act, which officially ended the use of silver as a standard of United States currency and established gold as the only standard. This still affects us today because although no country uses the gold standard, there is a rising support for its reintroduction in the hope of regulating U.S.

A change of pace back home started when President Reagan began his “reagenomics.” During both of his terms, Reagan presided over an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. He would decline wages and living standards for working families, an attack on labor unions as a way to lift Americans into the middle class, a dramatic increase in poverty and homelessness, and the merging and deregulation of the financial industry that led to the current mortgage meltdown, foreclosure problems and haunting recession. Inevitable social and economic forces did not cause these trends. They resulted from Reagan’s policy and political choices based on an underlying ideology.

After World War II, the Bretton Woods Agreement established the gold standard and two support institutions called the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. This would lead to a shift, away from the gold standard, to more relaxed systems. The idea of currency purely backed by gold was slowly being shifted to a trust based currency. These institutions purpose was to regulate the economies by injecting or taking money in a process called sterilization. Sterilization is to protect certain countries from a going bankrupt. If a country goes bankrupt, it chain a chain reaction of bankruptcies. So, in order to maintain balance, currencies need to be stable enough, so that it can be in debt without having to declare bankruptcy. The idea is

So, should United States tried to go back in a gold standard economy? Yes and no, although there are new forms of currency going around the world. The

After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers and subsequently a period of tension and hostility arose, known as the Cold War. During this time, a new possibility of complete nuclear destruction that would claim the lives of many emerged, therefore “the easing or relaxing of tensions” on both sides was needed, this period would be known as detente. Both countries had been guaranteed mutually assured destruction as they had both managed to stay ahead in the development of nuclear arsenals. By the late 1960s the Soviets had surpassed the United States in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) by 1,300 to 1,054. Although the U.S was still

Currently the unemployment rate is twenty-three percent (Roberts). That is a very high rate compared to past when

One of the characteristics of gold standard defined by Temin is that the adjustment mechanism for a trade deficit country was deflation rather than devaluation, that is, a change in domestic prices instead of a change in the exchange rate. In the event of a balance-of-payment deficit, countries on the gold standard could not devalue their currencies or expand the money supply to stimulate domestic demand, because by doing so would push up good prices, encourage more gold exports, and weaken the currency. Instead, they could only tighten monetary conditions with the goal of reducing domestic prices and costs until international balance was restored. “Critical to this process was the effort to reduce wages, the largest element in costs.” That is to say, the gold standard system must be maintained at the expense of the welfare of ordinary people, which they must either experienced wages fall or unemployment. This mechanism worked well to facilitate trade and exchange before the First World War, the reason,

The United States is currently experiencing a slow recovery from the recession of 2008-09. The current unemployment rate is 7.7%, which is the lowest level since December of 2008 (BLS, 2012). However, this rate is believed to higher than the rate that would occur if the economy was operating at peak efficiency, and it is also believed that there are structural issues still underpinning this performance. For example, the number of Americans who have exited the work force as the result of prolonged unemployment is believed to be higher than usual. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2012) notes that long-term unemployment of greater than 26 weeks is at a much higher rate than normal, which will have adverse long-run effects on the economy, since workers with long-term unemployment often find their career paths derailed.

The unemployment rate in the United States has improved dramatically over the last two years, from a high of 8.3% in July 2012, to a low of 6.6% in January 2014. In October of 2012, the civilian labor force increased from 578,000 to 155.6 million, labor force participation increased up to 63.8%, and total employment overall rose by 410,000! Since then, the unemployment rate has been falling at a stable rate due to a political push from Washington DC and new employment initiatives. The inflation rate over the last 2 years has been relatively stably, with a few major increases and decreases in 2012 and 2013. It reached a high of 2.3% in June of 2012, and reached a low of 1.0% at the end of 2013. The federal interest rate has remained at a constant .25% over the past few years.