{"id":11598,"date":"2015-08-29T10:45:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T15:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11598"},"modified":"2015-08-29T10:45:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T15:45:07","slug":"that-70s-show-episode-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11598","title":{"rendered":"That 70s show \u2013 episode 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-thumb\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/2015\/08\/28\/that-70s-show-episode-4\/\" target=\"_blank\">That 70s show \u2013 episode 4<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" src=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Total-credit-market-debt-1840-present.png\" alt=\"Total credit market debt 1840 - present\" width=\"1318\" height=\"695\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-thumb-caption\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>We have shown in the previous three episodes (episode\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/2015\/08\/05\/that-70s-show-episode-1\/\">1<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/2015\/08\/15\/that-70s-show-episode-2\/\">2<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/2015\/08\/22\/that-70s-show-episode-3\/\">3<\/a>) how the US economy structurally changed after Nixon took the US off gold, letting the Federal Reserve do what it does best. Obviously, with the \u201chard\u201d anchor of the US dollar cut loose, the rest followed suit. It is telling that the so-called post-Bretton Wood \u201cgold standard\u201d of all currencies, the Deutsche mark lost 65 per cent of its purchasing power from 1971 to 1990.<\/p>\n<p>Also note that the French, with its inferior Franc lost 84 per cent of its purchasing power over the same, time hated the Germans for it. As a \u201cvictorious\u201d nation of the Second World War, the French had a right to veto German unification, and would only agree to re-merge east and west if the Germans would give up their coveted mark and join the euro.<\/p>\n<p>But we digress, in the this episode we will focus on debt levels within the context of unrestrained central banking.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout history the US economy used to be leveraged, on average, 1.5 times GDP; total credit market debt fluctuated more or less within a tight range of maximum one standard deviation from its long term mean. Prior to 1971 the only time debt levels really got out of hand was during the Great Depression on back of a 45 per cent decline in nominal GDP. Total outstanding debt, in dollar terms actually fell by 12 per cent over the same time span.<\/p>\n<p>So, the US economy was leveraged 1.5 times its annual output from 1840 to 1971 before fundamentally changing its trajectory. Needless to say, this low debt period \u00a0was also when the US economy became the world\u2019s largest and most sophisticated (<a href=\"http:\/\/bawerk.net\/2015\/08\/22\/that-70s-show-episode-3\/\">see here<\/a>) and ultimately a global hegemon.<a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/bawerk.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Total-credit-market-debt-1840-present.png\" data-slb-group=\"454\" data-slb-active=\"1\" data-slb-internal=\"0\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-458\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/bawerk.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Total-credit-market-debt-1840-present.png?resize=730%2C385\" alt=\"Total credit market debt 1840 - present\" width=\"730\" height=\"385\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Source: History of the United States from Colonial times to 1970, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bawerk.net<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That 70s show \u2013 episode 4 We have shown in the previous three episodes (episode\u00a01,\u00a02\u00a0and\u00a03) how the US economy structurally changed after Nixon took the US off gold, letting the Federal Reserve do what it does best. Obviously, with the \u201chard\u201d anchor of the US dollar cut loose, the rest followed suit. It is telling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8135,936,8537,951,280,303,305,309,353,1183,2055,8536,827,834],"class_list":["post-11598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bawerk-net","tag-bretton-woods","tag-credit-market-debt","tag-currency","tag-euro","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-fiat-currency","tag-gdp","tag-gold-standard","tag-nixon","tag-that-70s-show","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11599,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions\/11599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}