The Deaf Oracle

clipped from mises.org a viewer asked Buffett if he believed what his father Congressman Howard Buffett believed, which was this: "So far as I can discover, paper money systems [like John Law's] have always wound up with collapse and economic chaos." "Sounds like my dad, yeah," Buffett replied, "I heard that every night at the dinner table for a long time." The Oracle admits that the printing of paper money is inflationary, but being a consistent proponent of expanding government, he constantly dismisses gold and proposals to return America to a gold standard. His father Howard understood the evils of unchecked government money printing. "The paper money disease has been a pleasant habit thus far and will not be dropped voluntarily any more than a dope user will without a struggle give up narcotics," Congressman Buffett wrote. "But in each case the end of the road is not a desirable prospect." The Congressman's son may have heard his father at the dinner table, but he wasn't listening.