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To be viable for wide use in trade and for reserve purposes, even a currency nominally backed by gold has to be issued by a solid and trustworthy country, served by a well-organized national financial system with reliable and transparent accounting, and credibly convertible on demand into a gold bullion.

Russia and the BRICs simply do not qualify. Even adding them all together does not do it, just as adding five sick men together does not make even one healthy man. And the problem with "other commodities" as physical backing for a currency is that no one wants to demand the conversion of a pile of currency into gold and get something else that lacks gold's enduring appeal, intrinsic value, and deep market.

Yet even a properly established currency scrupulously backed by gold and a trustworthy country and financial system has a deep flaw: its gold monetary base is subject to fluctuations and manipulations. During the 1920s and 30s, the US and France pursued ill-founded policies of gold accumulation that caused a contraction of the supply of gold as a monetary base. The result was the world-wide deflation that caused and defined the Great Depression.

Going off the gold standard was essential to economic recovery, to winning WW II and the Cold War, and to financing both the US welfare state and the global economic expansion of the last several decades. A "printing press" for a supply of currency is no so bad -- provided that it is used with discipline and to good purposes.