There are so many non-sequiturs in this post it’s ludicrous.
Currency is what people think its worth because it is merely an extension of barter.
It could be written on a note enforceable in a court of law.
"Sell me your cow today and I will deliver to you 40 plump hens tomorrow."
That's a contract.
Currency is a contract.
It is a promissory note which doesn't have to be backed up by gold...just a promise and an experience of delivery on that promise.
Look around you. We are not on the gold standard and the world is just effin fine.
On the gold standard, the value of currency fluctuated wildly sometimes losing purchasing power by as much plus or minus 20% a year.
Since we got off the gold standard, monetary value has been pretty stable year to year.
On the gold standard, we were subject to periodic bouts of deflation and the “deflationary depressions” that accompanied them. We had severe depressions every 20 years or so.
Off the gold standard, we’ve only had one depression, the great depression of the 1930’s. The great recession of 2008 never turned into a depression, thanks to the flexibility that the federal reserve had by not being on the gold standard.
Completely false: oil was already priced in US dollars because the US had been the world's largest oil exporter for decades before the 1960's.
Dropping the gold standard gave us instant inflation and enabled open-ended government spending and trade deficits.
When imports exceeded exports, those accounts had to be settled in specie at some point, requiring an net importer to devalue their currency relative to gold and eventually pricing out imports.
This trade-balancing feature of the gold standard was abandoned, enabling first Japan and then China and Germany to rape the US economy.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Progressive Movement “useful idiot" FDR effectively unconstitutionally repealed the Constitution’s Clause 1 of Section 10 of Article I when he signed Executive Order 6202, that order an attempt to remedy so-called gold hoarding.
"Article I, Section 10, Clause 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts [emphases added]; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
Corrections, insights welcome.
Off the gold standard and on our way to financial disaster.
Just a plain old silver quarter will still get me a gallon of gas. That’s all I know.
When the US abandoned the gold standard in the early 1970’s,
...
That particular gold standard was rigged and the price in dollars was kept artificially low. Nixon had no choice but to end it.