They explain exactly what the site was created for, though the post was not present 10 months ago. I’m not sure if I know enough about economics to understand whether they believe what Kochevnik81 was guessing they believe, that the getting off the good standard was bad for the economy.

wtf1971.com/…/reader-qa-why-did-you-create-wtfhap…

What drove you to create the site? What has been the most surprising outcome?

The inspiration for creating the website was born out of pragmatism. That is to say, the data was collected with the a priori assumption that abandoning the Bretton Woods agreement lent an unprecedented and unaccountable agency to nation states (particularly the United States thanks to the US dollar’s position as a global reserve currency) in their ability to expand money and credit.

The Austrian position upon which our a priori assumptions are based is as follows:

1. That expansion of money and credit sends artificial signals to the market which breed malinvestment leading to an ultimate deflationary credit & money contraction when the malinvestment liquidates(Austrian business cycle theory).

2. Nation States (and particularly the United States) have an unfair advantage over capital markets in their ability to unilaterally capture seigniorage through the issue of new currency while simultaneously debasing the real value of their debt and liabilities as the nominal supply of money increases.

3. Point 2 leads to a top down redistribution of productive capital accumulated by private industry to the public sector which is often redirected to frivolous and/or unprofitable ventures.

The pragmatic usefulness of the website (for me personally) was merely having the data all in one place where I could simply refer a person to the data to quickly and easily demonstrate the many downstream effects of fiscal and monetary expansion (as based on the Austrian positions I outlined above).

The idea to turn it into a meme rather than a financial blog (or something of that kind) was born out of a desire to foster a reaction of socratic self discovery in the viewer. It is far more important to me that the viewer walk away with the right question rather than with what I believe is the right answer…What the F*** happened in 1971?