With the passing of British writer The Right Honourable The Lord Rees-Mogg, a voice that for more than 60 years resonated in the freedom firmament was stilled.
Upon graduation from Oxford in 1951 (as president of Oxford Union), William Rees-Mogg began his journalism career at The Financial Times in 1952. He moved to the Sunday Times in 1960, where he became editor in 1967, serving until 1981. He left the Times after the paper was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, returning years later as an occasional columnist on current affairs.
I saw Lord Rees-Mogg for lunch just several months ago in London. As always he was sharp, questioning me about the upcoming American election and giving [me] his take on world events and the global economy. His mind never slept.
In The Great Awakening, Rees-Mogg and Davidson thundered in 1991 about the coming recession that overtook the American economy just nine years later with the bursting of the dot.com bubble in March, 2000, when the NASDAQ peaked at 5,132 (at this writing it remains at just 3,000).
In extreme circumstances, paper money can lose all its value, [while] gold is still acceptable as payment.
We need ... to have permanent money, which can be relied upon to survive.... The historic value of gold has been astonishingly stable over centuries.
This [present system] is a system which could be blown away because there is nothing in it to gain confidence. Even a return to paper money would raise the level of reality attached to world currencies. There is a problem of raising the reality level of all currencies — a problem which nineteenth century economists solved by convertibility to gold.
He knew many of the great figures of his time, but was by no means persuaded that all was right with the world.
He was a very good writer. I will miss him.
Using his considerable influence as editor at the London Times and thereafter, he helped to blaze a trail into the future that has made the efforts and voices of others in the freedom firmament more credible, effective, and persuasive. Indeed, he will be missed.