The Gold Standard in 90 Seconds - NO BS (better audio)

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People like Ron Paul are constantly lamenting the good ol' days when America was on the gold standard. The reason for this is not that gold is pretty or magical or any better than counterfeit-resistant pieces of paper; the reason is simply that no matter how much they may want to, government cannot create any more gold to pay its bills.

Of course, if we could trust our government not to abuse the privilege, there would be no need to rely on the finite nature of atoms to keep the purchasing power of our currency constant.

Though the United States had been shying away from the gold standard since the early 1900's, it wasn't until 1971 that President Nixon took us completely off the gold standard. This basically meant the government was now given free reign over the purchasing power of our currency. Let's take a look at the result of that experiment.

As self-granted government powers to print money have expanded, so too have the money supply.

You may also notice something happening at around 1922: this is the year the federal reserve started participating in open market operations. Seven years later, in 1929, America experienced the infamous black friday stock market crash, which was followed by the worst depression in its history.

Supporters of the gold standard do not see this as coincidence, and in fact blame the federal reserve for accentuating the natural booms and busts of the market by manipulating interest rates

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News & Politics

Tags:

• gold
• standard
• ron
• paul