Which of course does not match the historical record:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...
It always amuses me how strongly people come out in opposition to the idea of the gold standard, when it demonstrably seemed to work for America, it powered the country from the time it was a collection of colonies to the time it had men driving buggies around on the moon. The country was on the gold standard for hundreds of years. Coming off the gold standard is the experiment, is the outlier. The gold standard obviously worked well enough for that vast majority of the country's history, yet it's somehow regarded by certain people as an obviously horrible idea which is gross, repugnant, "a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history". It just doesn't add up. If it's such an insanely horrible idea, how did it work so well for so long?
And you can tell this because… ?
> […] the author isn't even attempting to present an impartial view on the topic.
Neither would someone who was arguing the Earth was round.
> It always amuses me how strongly people come out in opposition to the idea of the gold standard, when it demonstrably seemed to work for America, it powered the country from the time it was a collection of colonies to the time it had men driving buggies around on the moon.
No, it caused some huge boom and bust cycles, deflationary periods, and much suffering. It certainly made the Great Depression worse:
* https://www.nber.org/papers/w3488
Gold-as-currency was useful when we didn't know better, but we've moved on. See The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Bernstein for a good history:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold
An alternate telling would be that abandoning the gold standard allowed the government to circumvent the will of the people and enter a war there was no appetite to get involved in.
You may wish to re-examine that claim:
> Germany also made a secret offer to help Mexico regain territories lost in the Mexican–American War in an encoded telegram known as the Zimmermann Telegram, which was intercepted by British intelligence. Publication of that communique outraged Americans just as German submarines started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Wilson then asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy", and Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917.[4] U.S. troops began major combat operations on the Western Front under General John J. Pershing in the summer of 1918.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_World_War_...
The declaration passed 82-6 in the US Senate, and 373–50 in HoR:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_w...
Sound like a fairly popular action.
And it was NOT a production or energy crisis. That what people seems to not understand. Yes, 2008 was a bubble, but a lot of bubble bursted since the 70s and none of the burst created a depression like 2008. The only reason 2008 was this big is because it was an energy crisis, almost four time worst than the oil crisis of the 70s (which is also the first energy crisis). The gold/silver standard manufactured crisis (not helped with fractionnal banking tbh) that had no reason existing at all. Just made people poorer by design. This wasn't even caused by a famine or a war.
Here is my advice: unless the expert/advocate is an historian specialist of the 19th century (or even better: specialist of foreign trade or economics during the 19th century), do not believe anything he said. Don't believe me either, but "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", so look it up, just read on how interesting where the time of hard metal, how easy it is to raise interest rate without impairing trade when you have a gold standard. 19th century financial crisis in the western world despite the huge production boost from pillaging colonies workforce and ressources...
