Steve Lonegan Gets Job Pushing Gold Standard With Anti-Gay Group That Supported His Campaign | Right Wing Watch

In a recent conversation concerning the sovereign citizen movement and issues surrounding it, mention was made of how some proponents are "wanting" for a return to the gold standard. Although the ideology behind American Principles Project.

Money with independent value is a crucial component of a free society and a free market. Gold has proved, throughout history, to be the ideal monetary commodity because it is universally valuable and has a steady supply growth. The classical gold standard produced the highest levels of long-term price stability and economic growth of all U.S. monetary systems. The current paper dollar standard has caused financial disorder and kept the American economy from reaching its potential._

does not appear to be based on the Redemption theory of the Sovereigns,

Redemption theory involves claims that when the U.S. government abandoned the gold standard in 1933, it pledged its citizens as collateral so that it could borrow money. Other theories claim this happened in 1913 with the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. The movement also asserts that common citizens can gain access to funds in secret accounts using obscure procedures and regulations.

it remains important to be vigilant when this issue is bandied about by pols and pundits. As IGM (Initiative on Global Markets, at the University of Chicago’s business school) discovered in a recent poll concerning this question:

If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a “dollar” as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American.

Every single one of the economists surveyed disagreed with the statement; the only dissent, the degree to which they disagreed with the proposition.

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In his new job, it seems that Lonegan will unite the main political interests of APP’s chairman Sean Fieler, a little-known hedge fund manager who has become a major donor to the Religious Right and to social conservative causes in New York and New Jersey.

As we noted in a profile of Fieler earlier this year, the gold standard seems to be a pet project of his, so much so that an idea that is widely dismissed among mainstream economists has become a major policy platform of the American Principles Project. The issue was mentioned nowhere in the group’s original mission statement and doesn’t seem to have appeared on the group’s website until Fieler came on board as chairman in 2010.

Fieler and the American Principles Project have a history with Lonegan. Fieler is the major funder of the American Principles Fund , a super PAC affiliated with APP, which last year spent nearly $100,000 running anti-choice ads against Lonegan’s Democratic opponent Cory Booker. Fieler himself has maxed out personal contributions to Lonegan’s recent campaigns, giving his candidate committee $10,400 over the past two years.

Now, Lonegan will bring his unabashed anti-choice and anti-gay politics (remember when he speculated about whether Booker was gay?) to help unite the American Principles Project’s social and economic policy priorities.

Steve Lonegan Gets Job Pushing Gold Standard With Anti-Gay Group That Supported His Campaign | Right Wing Watch