<HTML> From: MurdochLance@netscape.net (Lance Murdoch) quoting Greenspan: "But the opposition to the gold standard in any form-from a growing number of welfare-state advocates-was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes." </BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^^^ CB: Today Greenspan  ( with a greenback standard , yet) probably feels he and the rest of the productive 1% are living happily ever after , since Reaganism ran up the biggest U.S. deficit spending and debt ever as a gambit for destroying the U.S. welfare system. </HTML>