When we left the Gold standard everything changed.
Our Dollars lost their historic medium of exchange or backing, if you will.
I contend that Gold has very little economic value. It is certainly not a measure of economic growth, activity or anything other than some arbitrary measure of wealth.
Our Dollars value is based on OIL or energy production. As it should be.
Energy/Oil is life. It is the life blood of everything and therefore is the only true measure of an economies vitality.
Probably so. Gold would probably return to being worth backing currency with if most of civilization collapsed and we had to start all over. In such a situation the full faith and credit of pretty much no nation would be worth much, so currency would need to be backed up by something other than promises again.
But in this day in age, the goldbugs just don't get that we are not ever going to go back to the gold standard short of a total collapse, prepper wonderland type situation.
If you believed these goldbugs (many of whom are conspiracy theorists) then gold rich countries like South Africa, China and Australia should be mining like crazy because he who has the most gold wins the game. Unfortunately, the global economy simply doesn't work that way. Not at all.
Some gold is a good commodity to have in one's portfolio, but I think most treat it as a short term bet against paper currencies.
dollars backed by gold became petrodollars, keeping their global importance b/c oil was paid for in dollars by us and other countries.
>I contend that Gold has very little economic value.
I agree. Even if we still have 100 million ounces, it would only be worth $130 billion, which is nothing in the economy. Gold became useless as a medium of exchange with fractional reserve banking which creates private fiat currency whose volume and value cannot be controlled by a single commodity, which was demonstrated by the bank failures of the Depression.
>Our Dollars value is based on OIL or energy production.
Our dollars are backed by plutonium warheads without which they would not buy oil or anything else.