Random Riley Research

Eclectic reading these last few days:

Colonial New Hampshire: John Wentworth was appointed governor of New Hampshire and "surveyor of the King's woods" in 1767. He enjoyed a connection with all the "first families" of New Hampshire and he had the advantage of taking over from a fellow Wentworth (his uncle Benning) who had been accused of exacting exorbitant fees for grants of land. (He was said to favor Massachusetts and Connecticut settlers, on the basis of their paying more for real estate and being better farmers than native New Hampshire men. Our own Snow family, settlers of Chesterfield, may have benefited from that prejudice.) He was also on the right side of the crown revenue crisis and received his commission from a Whig hero, Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquis of Rockingham--repealer of the Stamp Act. The previous Wentworth was a staunch Church of England man and he refused establishment of what would later become Dartmouth College, unless it fell under the direction of the Bishop of London. That was bound to rattle congregationalist sensibilities.

The new governor, John Wentworth, enjoyed a popularity that actually helped suppress revolutionary sentiment in New Hampshire. With the exception of the 1770 Boston Massacre, which left New Hampshire freemen feeling guilty about their tepid contributions to the cause, Wentworth's early years were mostly well received. Some of the governor's landed gentry friends were even reported to give type-scattering, press-burning threats to the printer of the New Hampshire Gazette, by way of keeping his Whig sentiments in check.

During the early part of his administration, Dartmouth College was established in the wilds of the frontier--Hanover--with about 18 English and six Indian scholars. The colony was also divided into five counties--in answer to the complaints of western townships, Chesterfield among them, that traveling to Portsmouth, "Strawberry Banks," was cumbersome and a source of tidy revenue for the seaboard justices of the peace and superior court judges. In 1771, paper money was abolished in the colony of New Hampshire, it having been "called in" in favor of silver and gold. (This last detail, along with others found in Jeremy Belknap's 1790, "History of New Hampshire" raises more questions. Where were the gold and silver coins minted? If only in England, was their resentment on not being able to issue currency. What did this coinage look like?)

Samuel Adams, The James K. Hosmer Biography: This is a small detail but worthy of repeating. Hosmer reminds us that every town in New England, in many respects, was like a city-state, a republic of its own. The selectmen could call for a warrant for a town meeting and only the items listed on the warrant could be voted upon at the meeting. No quorum was necessary, so if you wanted to weigh in, you had better attend. In many respects, the Revolutionary War began as a fight between one of these city-states, Boston, and the English empire. The fierce localism of the American tradition begins in New England.



They liked governing themselves, taking care of their own roads, their own education, and their own poor.

Peter D. Schiff: In "Crash Proof," Peter predicted the real estate crash of 2007 and the stock market crash of 2008, but equally interesting is his concise summary of how our federal government deceives us, in reporting economic reality. Take the "Consumer Price Index." The CPI tries to let us know how much our dollars are worth, and it is supposed to be an objective measure of how much it costs to purchase various necessary commodities. One component of that statistic is how much it costs to put a roof over our heads, but the value of housing is not an average of monthly mortgage or rent payments (which would be actual numbers) but "equivalent rent," a subjective number government economists are allowed to come up with on their own. How can we really say we have an objective replacement for the gold standard if federal economists are allowed to define the cost of rent however they choose?

Or consider "Gross Domestic Product." This is the sum total of all goods and services bought or traded within the borders of the United States--regardless of origin. The old "Gross National Product" was the measure of what we produced, and since that was getting more and more dismal, they began replacing that with GDP to mask the fact that we have become a nation of consumers, not producers.

I've never been a "gold standard only" amateur economist. I figured that if an objective collection of actualy commodities we purchase were included in the CPI, we had a fairly good picture of what our money is worth. Silly me. The government can make up their own definitions whenever they like. If CPI doesn't look good, they can just switch a commodity and make it look like they aren't printing too much of the green stuff. Bottom line: your dollars aren't worth so many sacks of potatoes. Your dollar is worth what the federal reserves says it is worth.