Nickel is a base metal the government used to replace silver. Since then, the government has inflated so much that even nickel is too valuable for US coinage.
Academic economists since John Maynard Keynes have mocked the classical gold standard, but when government implemented their system, we got inflation and destruction of the currency. Time to rethink the success of that gold standard.
Jeff talks to Keith Weiner of Monetary Metals about why gold still plays a major role in the global economy.
Legal tender laws create special privileges for government money. That kills true currency competition and favors the state's monopoly power.
The new "gold-exchange standard" of the 1920s was a new concoction of the world's regimes after the Great War. It certainly wasn't a true gold standard.
The gold standard supposed a limit to the fiscal voracity of governments, and suspending it unleashed the perverse proclivity of the states toward indebtedness and to pass the current imbalances on to future generations.
Gold was only included in the plans for the Bretton Woods system because of the veneer of solidity it gave.
Nixon’s closing the gold window should be seen as the end of the last remnant of the gold standard, not some kind of market failure. Governments controlled most of the gold and set its price.
The gold standard supposed a limit to the fiscal voracity of governments, and suspending it unleashed the perverse proclivity of the states toward indebtedness and to pass the current imbalances on to future generations.
Gold was only included in the plans for the Bretton Woods system because of the veneer of solidity it gave.
