IVIV (8): Nixonizing U.S. Currency

[Richard Fiero]

Mark Kohut wrote:
>just an umbidden thought or two......
>
>Pynchon did not really care if the dates were off by a bit, as we might agree.

P has been very careful with dates.  The mathematics and technologies 
of M&D look like Magickal thinking to us because P's characters 
remain in character. Same with GR and AtD.  GR shows that a few 
courses in calculus alter the brain permanently.  People were 
wondering "where's Einstein?" in AtD where the travelers turned out 
to be yet another false WE.

>But I think 1) IF he did think it a good thing that we got off the 
>Gold Standard---and that line quoted right from ATD about its 
>tyranny....and what we have learned from the international 
>relationsists on our list, thanks, then 2) if now the American 
>dollar is "free to float" in the world economy then it freely 
>signifies (in IV) Nixon's spying, lying, 18-missing minutes of 
>premptive fascist burglary justifying.......spying a metpahor for betrayal
>that goes way back in P's (fictionla) world---Vienna, turn of the 
>century?---and Nixon with his roots in McCarthyism, that American 
>sickness that it seems TRP feels poisoned much of America 
>since.................
. . .
Nixon erased a large amount of US debt by floating the 
currency.  Germany had got off the gold standard previously and 
enjoyed a strengthened currency.   Why should a nation be a gold 
dealer? And why should our standards of living be tied to a finite 
amount of some metal? If P's dates are off, which they seem to be, 
who is P jerking around? Probably Austrians-those of the Hayek and 
von Mises religion.  I'm not sure that the funny money in IV relates 
to the Nixon Shock.

Nixon's career was partly fueled by the Hiss case in which he was 
instrumental as a Senator.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissnixontapes.html
Nixon, drawing from his experience in the Hiss case, on how to 
proceed against Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked "The Pentagon Papers":
"We won the Hiss case in the papers.  We did.  I had to leak stuff 
all over the place.  Because the Justice Department would not 
prosecute it.  Hoover didn't even cooperate.  It was won in the 
papers.  We have to develop a program, a program for leaking out 
information.  We're destroying these people in the papers."
"I had Hiss convicted before he got to the grand jury....I no longer 
have the energy, [but we need] a son of a bitch who will work his 
butt off and do it dishonorably.  I know how to play the game and 
we're going to play it."
[July 1, 1971]
"[In the Hiss case] they were all against me.  We never got a thing 
[a leak] out of the grand jury until they indicted."
[July 2, 1971]

Pales in comparison to the misstatements of Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan 
and Bush II.  Bush I was a piece of work also about American exceptionalism.