Could The World Go Back To The Gold Standard?
Martin Wolf asks “Could the world go back to the gold standard?”
During any period of monetary disorder — the 1970s, for example, or today — a host of people calls for a return to the gold standard. This is not the only free-market response to the current system of fiat (or government-made) money. Other proposals are for privatising the creation of money altogether. (See, on this, Leland Yeager, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and Auburn University, in the latest issue of the Cato Journal.) But the gold standard is the classic alternative to fiat money. It is not hard to understand the attractions of a gold standard. Money is a social convention. The advantage of a link to gold (or some other commodity) is that the value of money would apparently be free from manipulation by the government. The aim, then, would be to “de-politicise” money. The argument in favour of doing so is that in the long-run governments will always abuse the right to create money at will. Historical experience suggests that this is indeed the case.
Wolf’s answer is predictable, but the whole article is worth reading.