GOLD-BUG, n. In political matters, a miscreant who has the wickedness to know that legislation cannot maintain a permanent relation between the values of two metals, even by the luminous device pf binding them together in the same coins. A miller who grinds the faces of the poor and takes the whole grist for toll. A hideous monster that disturbs the Bulletin's repose by sitting astride Deacon Fitch's stomach, picking the bones of "the debtor class" and blaspheming the dollar of our fathers.
2009 Update: A politician whose crusade for purity leads him at last to the dollar, who reads Austrian treatises in the original Texan and who turns to smelted stone for wisdom and temperance.
We have a hive of them here at the Von Mises Institute.
ReplyDeleteI'm first!
Gold-Bug: Right now, the H1N1.
ReplyDeleteFlash 55 - Favors
Turning Metal Music into Classical?
ReplyDeleteI used to be a gold-bug. Now I like silver jewelry better...goes better with white hair.
ReplyDeleteGold bug: I am thinking of a nice pretty ladybug brooch with diamond eyes and ruby spots.
ReplyDeleteLadybug Brooch Shopping
..
And neither Bierce nor Deacon Fitch had ever heard of the credit card ...
ReplyDeleteThe term 'gold-bug' is a misnomer, for the creature is of bird form - a raven, to be precise, that lines its nest with the shiny objects in which it puts its faith. The tribe recites to its chicks, with awe and horror, the tale of one who trusted instead in the reports of currency traders. It lost everything in a market crash and went mad, projecting its despair into the hearts and minds of humankind, leading to a lasting enmity between the two species.
Yep. That's another TRUE® story.
ReplyDeletehad the gold bug once
ReplyDeletereally just needed
a damn job
got it after months
of daily visitation
5000 feet down
a homestake shaft
building a dam
Bless Bless
W/V-spedin,,still kills
many a year,,car and vein
Gold-Bug: 535 of them should heed the advice
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd gotten here before Nessa. That's what I wanted to say.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, Quilly. You still win a finishing metal for due diligence.
ReplyDelete(Hello Ariel or Cooper! We await with baited breath grand entrances and pithy comments).
Hey, Karen, my comment was to be "every cloud has a gold-bug", but then I just didn't post it because it didn't seem pithy enough. What d'ya think?
ReplyDeleteHello Ariel. This is not my blog and I'm not Comments Moderator.
ReplyDeleteAmbrose should decide on appropriate commentary.
You are, Weirsdo. I didn't realize the Mises Institute was at Veryred. But, yep, that's the nest.
ReplyDeleteSure, Actonbell, and please bring us along when you go somewhere intemperate. (I was kind of thinking you'd be the one to bring up Poe's excellent story, though.)
Good point, Nessa.
Or visa-versa, Icy.
And sass, I think, TLP.
I'm sure it will look glamorous on you, Jim.
Gosh, Amoeba. You gut us so close to this TRUE(r) story, too.
Share more of that story, Bear.
Thom, they won't hear it from you, I don't think.
Well, then, Quilly, you're brilliant second.
That's something, isn't it, Karen?
I think that's pretty good, Ariel.
What are you talking about, Karen? A minute ago you were handing out medals.
Here's yet another TRUE story ~ A really, really long time ago, a relatively new aquaintence, Doug Pascover, had written in an
ReplyDeletee-mail correspondence: You must have read The Gold Bug (or something to that effect). Annoyed I had never heard of it, I promptly Googled it and read the first two or three paragraphs, as I was in the middle of doing something else. I replied that I had lived in Charleston and had never once met William Legrand.
At this particular moment, I'm about half-way thru the story. Jup is still at the end of the seventh limb of the tulip tree. Unfortunately for him, he'll have to stay there because I'm in the middle of doing something else right now.
The gold bug here would be for Mrs. Jim. I don't wear brooches.
ReplyDelete.. :-)
Karen, I hope he brought string.
ReplyDeleteSure, buddy. Whatever you say.