The gold standard in one question...

[cthulu2016]

Is there a sensible worldview wherein Peru is a richer nation than Japan, or where Russia is richer than the Eurozone combined?

I'm pretty sure that in terms of gold reserves in the ground they would be.

Even if, for some insane reason, someone wanted an economy with a static money supply that would ensure constant deflation as wealth was created and represented by the same amount of money, it still wouldn't make sense to peg a currency to a metal. Any metal.

That said, someone on DU did once propose (for comedic purposes) the use of a very, very rare metal to represent wealth—Uranium-235. Every time someone amassed more than 20-30 pounds of the stuff there would be a nuclear explosion, so greed would be capped.

[Scootaloo]

1. That's what wars are for, friend!

Just ask Cortes!


Or Pizarro!


Yessir, the gold standard; the fastest way to handle that whole "seven billion people" problem!

[NYC_SKP]

2. Who has fresh water and fertile land shall rule the day.

You can't eat, drink, or breath gold.

[dionysus]

3. except that gold buys the armies to take those places over.

[Warpy]

7. That's what they found out in the Depression

when their gold and silver heirlooms were just enough to buy them a dinner at a cheap diner so they could keep going one more day.

What I have to barter are skills.

[sendero]

4. While I am certainly not happy witth how..

.. our currency is managed now, using the gold standard would be much worse.

But I don't worry about it, there is a higher chance that I will live to be 300 years old than there is of this country going to the gold standard.

[Fumesucker]

5. The level of a civilization is fairly closely related to the amount of energy available..

So how about using the kilowatt hour as a standard medium of exchange?

There isn't a fixed amount of energy but a kilowatt hour is an actual tangible thing that can be measured..

I ran this by a gold bug I sometimes discuss things with and he was actually quite intrigued.

[pampango]

6. Krugman on GOP economics and the gold standard

GOP Intellectual Decline, Monetary Edition

...now we have Mitt Romney declaring his intention to replace Ben Bernanke for, um, pursuing aggressive monetary policy to fight a recession (not aggressive enough, but that’s another issue). Romney:

I want to make sure the Federal Reserve focuses on maintaining the monetary stability that leads to a strong dollar and confidence that America is not going to go down the road that other nations have gone down, to their peril.

And the GOP platform will reportedly include a call for steps toward a return to the gold standard. The really strange thing about all this is that this turn toward hard-money mysticism is taking place even as events have demonstrated that the advantages of not being on a gold standard, of having a fiat currency that can be printed freely in emergencies, are even greater than standard analysis had supposed.

So the GOP has decided that we must reject the evils of fiat money and go for the gold standard at precisely the moment when events have demonstrated that fiat money is a really useful thing and the loss of flexibility that comes from ending fiat currencies can be utterly disastrous. What’s going on?

In this sense fiat money is like, oh, Social Security. The problem it creates for conservatives is not that it doesn’t work, but that it does — which is a challenge to their philosophy. And so it must die.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/gop-intellectual-decline-monetary-edition/

[cthulu2016]

8. good post

[dia09]

9. Spam deleted by Warren DeMontague (MIR Team)

[tkmorris]

10. You've got something wrong here

IF the US govt held 260 billion ounces and each ounce was worth a mere 10 dollars the total value of US govt deposits would be $2.6 trillion. Of course an ounce of gold is actually worth more like $1000 per, which would make the US' holdings worth more like $260 trillion. I suspect you have gotten the amount of US gold holdings incorrect but I am too lazy to Google up the proper figures.