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0 pointsdavid9274y ago0 comments

First, there are fewer than 200 countries.

Second, they've only left it since the 1970's in the current era and that was because the US could use its dominant position to do so (the Petro-dollar).

Third, it doesn't matter if it's a "rock" or not, as long as it's scarce. In this case, this rock has all of human history recognizing its use in this capacity. You have to remember that the monetization of a scarce material, such as precious metals, is a Nash equilibrium. It's the long-term answer, by definition. The markets don't actually always go up, but gold stays gold.

> read the academic work showing that trying to stay on the gold standard

Like Bernanke's PhD dissertation? Sure. Or I can just wait. Because since his tenure we went from $3 trillion to $28 trillion before the Federal Reserve stopped reporting money supply.

Or just compare the US to Germany in the same time period with its hyperinflation. Which fared better?

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ChrisLomont4y ago

>First, there are fewer than 200 countries.

UN recognizes 251 countries and territories. Many territories have independent currencies. So for the sake of this discussion, there are over 200 places that left gold standards. Not a single country (or territory) remained on one. Not one. So by that metric, every currency that was not fiat has failed. If a gold standard resulted in a better economy, don't you think maybe one country would have kept on it and demonstrated this superiority? Or maybe if a gold standard is demonstrably inferior, would not every country eventually realize it and leave? Which does evidence demonstrate?

>Second, they've only left it since the 1970's in

That's false. Most left it in the 1930s [0] as it became clear the gold standard was bad for economic recovery. There's a good reason the world economic growth was so slow for centuries but really grew after countries stopped tying their growth to the rate they can mine. It's silly to limit the total value of transactions across goods to the rate one can dig up gold. It slows capital.

>Because since his tenure we went from $3 trillion to $28 trillion before the Federal Reserve stopped reporting money supply

If your claim is that lack of gold standards results in debt, then why is this not the case in all the countries? Oops. It's simply not. The US debt or lack of other country debt is simply political fiscal policy - nothing about a gold standard prevented past countries from getting into debt. So this is irrelevant.

The US had public government debt longer under the gold standard than it did not being on the gold standard, since it started public debt in the 1700s. Public debt is simply borrowing, and can happen with or without a gold standard, and history shows.

As to the Fed "stopped reporting money supply", here are at least M1 [1], M2 [2], and multiple flavors [3] of money supply as reported by the Fed. They all track from at latest 1960 through (checks date) Aug 2021. There's plenty more places to see the Fed reports on the money supply. What do you mean when you claim they don't report any more?

The only places making this claim (as usual) are places like shadow stats and zerohedge. If you want to do a neat experiment (I have), take claimed historical inflation from zerohedge, integrate it to get compound for say the past 20 years, then look at BLS claimed inflation for the past 20 years, then get ads from then and now, and see which places are closer to reality. I've used this simple, do-it-yourself demonstration many times to show people that those sites are crap.

The Fed (and Census, and BLS, and every agency) from time to time changes things to better reflect current needs. I suppose the Fed changing how it reports is what you're referring to, an action that every time flips out the zerohedge crowd. Here's a decent explanation [4].

>Or just compare the US to Germany in the same time period with its hyperinflation. Which fared better?

We're nothing like Germany hyperinflation. Panic and doom nonsense. Germany entered a gold standard, and tried to hold onto it after WWI, but reparations made them lose enough gold, that they imploded fiscally trying to maintain it. Had they not wanted to limit themselves to gold (which they ultimately didn't since it proved impossible economically - again an example that tying one's economy to the amount of gold one owns is stupid), they would have had a smoother transition after WWI and leading to their hyperinflation.

This also clearly demonstrates that having a gold standard does not prevent a country going into hyperinflation - Germany had one, it imploded due to debts, and they hyperinflated. Of course you can claim "they stopped the gold standard!" Of course they did, as did every country that claimed to be on one until fiscal irresponsibility or external hazard caused it to implode. A gold standard is no insurance against hyperinflation - and history (and academic literature) has plenty of examples.

The evidence now is that gold standards harm economies.

[0] https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-history-of-the-gold-s...

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL [3] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.h...

[4] https://rationalreasoning.substack.com/p/on-the-feds-discont...

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