IVIV (8): Nixonizing U.S. Currency

[Mark Kohut]

yea, I'd say TRP puts it to the Austrians, Von Mises and Hayek,etc., whose economic religion has been on the rise since the 70s.....He certainly goes after many in the Vienna section of AtD.

But, the Von Mises' and Hayek's wanted, still, the Gold Standard, am I right? 

So, does TRP score Nixon for going off the GS or, more, score the free-floating Nixon currency that is created in IV? 

Think of how TRP expounds the evil of McCarthyism in Vineland. Nixon gets linked to that---the anti-communism that meant betraying all who had once sympathized, been part of, the American version of a largely idealistic movement in America before WW2....



--- On Fri, 10/2/09, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (8): Nixonizing U.S. Currency
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, October 2, 2009, 7:54 PM
> 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. 
>