Gold Standard

In this week’s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Joseph Salerno’s Money, Sound and Unsound, and still finds it golden.

When the Massachusetts colony issued its own unredeemable paper money in 1690, it was with the promise that it would soon be redeemable in specie. Like all paper money issued by government, it lost value and the confidence of the people.

When the Massachusetts colony issued its own unredeemable paper money in 1690, it was with the promise that it would soon be redeemable in specie. It was a lie.

Is it theoretically possible to go back to the gold standard? If so, what are some ways it could be implemented?

Consumer confidence is low while Jerome Powell claims he doesn’t care much about the price of precious metals.

Bob applies Mises’ taxonomy of money and the regression theorem to Bitcoin, asking whether it should be classified as commodity or fiat money and whether Austrian theory really rules out Bitcoin ever becoming money.

It is clear that the government has lost all spending discipline and it would be foolish to believe that it will suddenly regain that discipline absent an external control, namely, gold.

The purchasing power of the US dollar has been debased by over 99 percent since the foundation of the Federal Reserve.

Bob responds to James Rickards’ recent tweet on record U.S. gold exports driving an improved trade balance, walking through the official data on non-monetary gold, Trump-era tariff uncertainty, and the broader question of what chronic trade deficits really mean in a post-gold-standard world.

Menger said alternative monetary theories were “unhistorical,” but one could argue that Menger’s theory also lacks historical evidence necessary to verify his theory. Did Menger display a double standard or a nuanced view as to what we should expect from different monetary theories?