Jim Whelpley -- A friend.

A wonderful friend died yesterday after a long illness.  Jim Whelpley was, above all else,  an original and highly creative thinker, and above all a loyal friend.  Jim's life, like most, was no smooth cruise on calm waters with the wind always at his back and the sun always shining.  He had his struggle with demon rum and solved it once and for all by becoming a teetotaler.  And he ran afoul of a vile criminal element in society when he legitimately sold his company to a prestigious group that turned out to be a virtual front for a international crime syndicate.  Jim spent a lot of time and energy solving that problem, but he did and was completely exonerated.   


Jim's most original thinking, at least in my book, was his ideas on the economy.  Long before anyone, like back in the '60's, Jim was talking about the monetary system and its dangerous tendency to expand too quickly and take on unlimited debt.  Never content to follow the crowd, or "the experts", Jim was a proponent of doing the research, digging up the facts, and coming to your own conclusions, no matter what the conventional wisdom and experts were saying.  As a consequence he foresaw all the problems that beset our world economy today.  Much of his inspiration for his iconoclastic approach was Irving Fischer, the head of the Yale economics department in the early part of the 20th century.  Jim knew Fisher's thoughts and history cold and was intrigued by how he came to revise his view of the cause of the '29 crash and subsequent depression of the 1930's.  He saw us repeating the same actions that led to the crash and depression all through the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's and while he warned and warned most people were too addicted to the "punch bowl", as he used to say, to step back and consider the consequences.  The consequences are here now, not only in the US, but all over the developed world.  Excessive debt leading to excessive government all flowed from the creation of too much fiat money and the lack of discipline and control on the part of governments.  Jim didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. Sometime in the 70's Jim bought a bank in Texas was grandfathered exempt from the Federal Reserve system and could practice banking outside the rules and regulations of that system.  This meant no fractional banking which Jim thought to be at the heart of the problem of over expansion of the money supply.  Taking the leverage out of the banking system was part of his mantra.  We can see how wise that thinking was now that everyone is deleveraging and trying to get rid of debt.  


Looking back on Jim's perspective on these matters,  it's amazing how patient and humble he was presenting his case.  He had the facts, he had done the homework, and yet he didn't call the rest of us fools for not seeing it even though we didn't necessarily have all the facts, nor had done all that homework. Jim just patiently waded in making his case year after year. Waiting, probably, for everyone to catch up somewhere along the way.   


Just for the record, here's a website with some of Fisher's history and thoughts. Jim and Irving were right.  They're probably discussing the economy right now.  

ADDED:  Jim's ideas on banking included elimination of the centralized Federal Reserve System and returning to a free market based banking system.  This book, now available on line for free, discusses this concept.   Jim would whole heartedly approve this author's work.