Gold Standard

But if investment-conference attendance is any indication, the price of gold and other commodities has a long way to go — up.

No doubt, the costs of a return to "sound money" — that is ending the government money-supply monopoly and returning the supply of money to free-market forces — would most likely be substantial. It would most likely entail a severe loss in output and employment, given that inflation has been allowed to have a say in the allocation of scarce resources for decades.

The result of the governments' and the unions' meddling with the height of wage rates cannot be anything else than an incessant increase in the number of unemployed.

Mises knew why abandoning the principle of sound money would be so problematic: "In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about."

The present glut in the money markets, with excessively cheap money and its attendant evils and dangers to the credit structure of the country, is due to the concurrence of three main causes.

We must unmask the fact that they use the Federal Reserve to dupe the masses into supporting imperialism. The Fed must be stopped. Gold coins must return as our monetary standard. The ideas of the Austrian economists must prevail.

The advocates of public control cannot do without inflation. They need it in order to finance their policy of reckless spending and of lavishly subsidizing and bribing the voters. In spreading discontent and social unrest, inflation generates favorable conditions for the subversive propaganda of the self-styled champions of welfare and progress. There cannot be any doubt that officialdom will be eager to sabotage a reform whose main purpose is to curb the power of the bureaucracy in monetary matters.

From the book What Has Government Done to Our Money? Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

From the book What Has Government Done to Our Money? Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

Jay Taylor made the case that John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman were wrong and that Ludwig von Mises was right. Inflation and depression are caused by excessive credit creation. The Austrians advocate for a gold standard while bankers and politicians hate gold.