George Selgin — Ten Things Every Economist Should Know about the Gold Standard

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George Selgin on the gold standard.

I close with a few words concerning why it matters that we get the facts straight about the gold standard. It isn't simply a matter of winning people over to that standard. Though I'm perhaps as ready as anyone to shed a tear for the old gold standard, I doubt that we can ever again create anything like it. But getting a proper grip on gold serves, not just to make the gold standard seem less unattractive than it is often portrayed to be, but to remove some of the sheen that has been applied to modern fiat-money arrangements using the same brush by which gold has been blackened. The point, in other words, isn't to make a pitch for gold. It's to make a pitch for something–anything–that's better than our present, lousy money.

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Ten Things Every Economist Should Know about the Gold Standard
George Selgin | Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, Professor Emeritus of economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch