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Should/could the USA go back on the gold standard?

Should/could the USA go back on the gold standard?

  • Yes, I think this is feasible and could solve a number of the economic issues.

    Votes: 6 37.5%

  • I think it could solve some problems but it's not possible to switch.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • It would be possible to switch but I don't think it would solve anything.

    Votes: 2 12.5%

  • No, it's not possible to switch and there would be no point doing so.

    Votes: 8 50.0%
  • Total voters
    16
Ikari said:
When we loose control of our currency, yes it is a bad thing.
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How would we lose control of our currency? And the point of a currency is for it to be worth something not for it to be another control issue.
 
DGomez said:
It's a mixed limitless standard. The gold standard did work until the depression. The reason it stopped working was because of issues regarding how money is handled in the bank. Those issues have since been resolved. There theoretically could be enough gold if we adjusted our prices accordingly. Instead of charging $1 for a soda you would charge $.01.
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But why would it be better to value the currency against 1 thing rather than everything like now?
 
DGomez said:
How would we lose control of our currency?
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When the market gets cornered.

DGomez said:
And the point of a currency is for it to be worth something not for it to be another control issue.
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Currency is a huge soveriegnty issue...HUGE. If you don't have control of your own money, you're at the mercy of another state or organization.
 
competition is the corner stone of a free market.

Elimination of legal tender laws would go along way in solving the issues we have. If fiat currency actually had to compete in the market place, the Fed would be forced to actually provide a strong dollar policy rather then paying lip service to having a strong dollar policy while doing the opposite.

None of the poll options fit my view on the subject though.
 
ARealConservative said:
competition is the corner stone of a free market.

Elimination of legal tender laws would go along way in solving the issues we have. If fiat currency actually had to compete in the market place, the Fed would be forced to actually provide a strong dollar policy rather then paying lip service to having a strong dollar policy while doing the opposite.

None of the poll options fit my view on the subject though.
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If you want to allow something like the Liberty Dollar, I can go for that. Though only Congress was given permission to print and regulate the value of money; no one else. But if it's a metal based sort of thing, I think that's maybe ok. The US government, however, it makes no sense to get rid of our fiat currency. As undesirable as it may be, it's better than the alternatives. Metal backed currency for us just won't work anymore.
 
ARealConservative said:
competition is the corner stone of a free market.

Elimination of legal tender laws would go along way in solving the issues we have. If fiat currency actually had to compete in the market place...
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Our currency competes in foreign exchange markets all the time.
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
But why would it be better to value the currency against 1 thing rather than everything like now?
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If you have a currency based on "everything" then the amount of money you could print is virtually limitless.

Say you could only print a dollar for every ounce of gold you have. If you have 50oz of gold, you could not print more than 50 dollars. Because of the limited and finite supply of your dollars, the value would skyrocket.
 
Ikari said:
Currency is a huge soveriegnty issue...HUGE. If you don't have control of your own money, you're at the mercy of another state or organization.
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But we'd still print our own money. We wouldn't be handing the reins over to anyone. The only difference is that you couldn't print as much money as you wanted. That's called responsible spending, not sovereignty issues.
 
DGomez said:
If you have a currency based on "everything" then the amount of money you could print is virtually limitless.

Say you could only print a dollar for every ounce of gold you have. If you have 50oz of gold, you could not print more than 50 dollars. Because of the limited and finite supply of your dollars, the value would skyrocket.
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Currency backed by a limited commodity chasing a potentially infinite amount of goods is the makings of deflation which is worse for an economy than even inflation is.
 
DGomez said:
But we'd still print our own money. We wouldn't be handing the reins over to anyone. The only difference is that you couldn't print as much money as you wanted. That's called responsible spending, not sovereignty issues.
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No way. If you're backed by metal and that metal gets cornered you can't just "print more money", that money has to be backed by something. You have to have to gold or silver to print it. You don't control it fully anymore if it's a cornered commodity. Price of silver or whatever is the metal backing would skyrocket. Huge...huge deflation, that's sudden transfer of wealth and that's going to favor creditors over debtors. And let's ignore the fact that most people live with debt and would thus be f'd. The US is a huge debtor. You've just shot yourself in the foot. All cause we'd loose control over the currency. Metal backing isolates money from some things, but amplifies others. It was good back in the day when things were separate, didn't run off a huge global market, and technology over mining and trading weren't as good. But now, technology and information has grown to make metal backing a bad idea. We'd quickly loose control of our own currency and find ourselves at the whim of other States. I'm not looking to give up my sovereignty.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Our currency competes in foreign exchange markets all the time.
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I'm speaking of legal tender laws.

Suppose I agree to paint your house for an agreed on price. In our case, we agreed that I would paint your house, and you would provide me with 3 ounces of gold. Courts should require you to live up to your end of the agreement.

So long as the courts undermine Gresham's law, the incentive to keep a strong dollar policy is merely lip service.
 
DGomez said:
If you have a currency based on "everything" then the amount of money you could print is virtually limitless.

Say you could only print a dollar for every ounce of gold you have. If you have 50oz of gold, you could not print more than 50 dollars. Because of the limited and finite supply of your dollars, the value would skyrocket.
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There is a reason the gold standard didn't work.
 
Maximus Zeebra said:
There is a reason the gold standard didn't work.
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I love these simplistic lines of thought.

The gold standard was effectively severed in 1913. Since that time, we had a major depression beginning in 1929, and had to declare our self bankrupt and unable to fulfill the promises made to the rest of the world in the early 1970's. Today we see ourselves on the verge of another major calamity as well....only time will tell how bad it will get.

Nothing I see indicates that this form of monetary unit is any better at bridging the wealth gap in this country, and I would even suggest it makes it worse. It certainly provides another tool for politicians to wage war or to spend money they don't have to directly collect.

If one can say that a gold standard didn't work, then it can certainly be said about the much shorter life span of the various systems derived after it.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
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Currency backed by a limited commodity chasing a potentially infinite amount of goods is the makings of deflation which is worse for an economy than even inflation is.
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Not at all. It would be currency backed by a limited commodity chasing the amount of goods as it is within your means to pay for. That's called a budget.
 
Ikari said:
No way. If you're backed by metal and that metal gets cornered you can't just "print more money", that money has to be backed by something. You have to have to gold or silver to print it. You don't control it fully anymore if it's a cornered commodity. Price of silver or whatever is the metal backing would skyrocket. Huge...huge deflation, that's sudden transfer of wealth and that's going to favor creditors over debtors. And let's ignore the fact that most people live with debt and would thus be f'd. The US is a huge debtor. You've just shot yourself in the foot. All cause we'd loose control over the currency. Metal backing isolates money from some things, but amplifies others. It was good back in the day when things were separate, didn't run off a huge global market, and technology over mining and trading weren't as good. But now, technology and information has grown to make metal backing a bad idea. We'd quickly loose control of our own currency and find ourselves at the whim of other States. I'm not looking to give up my sovereignty.
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We live with debt because of the lack of gold standard. It would be entirely possible to globalize currency and have it be backed by a gold standard.

I don't even know what you're talking about when you say "when metal gets cornered." Are you referring to some hostile takeover where a crime lord will be hording all the gold lol? I'd say we've already done a pretty good job cornering our currency right now in regards to the debt we have with China. They have basically been funding our economy for years now. If that's not a lack of currency control, I don't know what is.
 
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DGomez said:
We live with debt because of the lack of gold standard. It would be entirely possible to globalize currency and have it be backed by a gold standard.

I don't even know what you're talking about when you say "when metal gets cornered." Are you referring to some hostile takeover where a crime lord will be hording all the gold lol? I'd say we've already done a pretty good job cornering our currency right now in regards to the debt we have with China. They have basically been funding our economy for years now. If that's not a lack of currency control, I don't know what is.
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We don't live in debt because of lack of gold standard, we live in debt because we borrow, both personally and on a national level. And cornering a market is a market force.

Cornering the market - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When we were on the silver standard last, there was a near cornering of that market wherein a group of people or oligopoly purchase the vast majority of supply. Going to a metal backed currency will not work in today's markets. It's just that simple. While there are attractive things to it, the negatives are too great and we would quickly loose control of our own currency. That's the facts, while fiat isn't all that appealing it allows for better control of our own money. You never want to lose control of your own money.
 
Ikari said:
We don't live in debt because of lack of gold standard, we live in debt because we borrow, both personally and on a national level. And cornering a market is a market force.
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We live in debt because money became electronic (a la Visa cards). Payments went from "I can only buy what I have cash in hand for" to "I can now buy whatever I want because someone else is paying for me right now and then I'll pay off the middle man in increments."

Ikari said:
Cornering the market - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Cornering the market means you're controlling a commodity. That's very different from "bank gold." There's no market involvement that could be cornered. We just have it. Before we used to store it at Fort Knox. It's all government controlled.

Ikari said:
When we were on the silver standard last, there was a near cornering of that market wherein a group of people or oligopoly purchase the vast majority of supply. Going to a metal backed currency will not work in today's markets. It's just that simple. While there are attractive things to it, the negatives are too great and we would quickly loose control of our own currency. That's the facts, while fiat isn't all that appealing it allows for better control of our own money. You never want to lose control of your own money.
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Ok. You keep saying that we would loose control of our currency but you have yet to say why. I already countered with the fact that we barely control our own currency as is with the current system. Does the fact that China basically owns us not bother you at all so long as we can just keep printing money that has George Washington's face on it?
 
Ikari said:
We don't live in debt because of lack of gold standard, we live in debt because we borrow
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Our financial system is based on debt. Fiat currency is credit based at its very core.
 
emdash said:
I don't think the government just generates numbers on a computer. I was under the impression that it sold bonds to both US citizens and foreign investors, so that we do owe tons of money to places like china, and even more to ourselves.
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The Federal Reserve generate money by entering numbers in a computer but there is more to it.

Most money is not in paper form but is digitized.

emdash said:
please explain, harry guerrilla
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A fiat/ commodity combo takes on both styles of currencies.

Although I think that the commodity portion should only cover 5-15%.
It should also be a multi-commodity meaning that it should be of multiple non perishable tangible goods. Just an idea though.


The problem with just a single commodity standard is that speculators can cause wild swings in the price of the currency and that individuals can try to corner the market on the commodity and cause deflation, inflation.

A fiat currency can be just as volatile as a single commodity currency.

Probably the ultimate and best solution is free banking.
 
DGomez said:
Cornering the market means you're controlling a commodity. That's very different from "bank gold." There's no market involvement that could be cornered. We just have it. Before we used to store it at Fort Knox. It's all government controlled.
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I think you are heading in the right direction, you need to read a little more about it. You can corner the market on a commodity and it happened.

Example. Investor starts to buy all the gold shares on the market which in turn drives up the price of gold and then it drives up the value of currency.

That can only be short lived though. The turn around is a speeding drop to hell in the currencies value.

Read about free banking, it is a much better idea in my opinion.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I think you are heading in the right direction, you need to read a little more about it. You can corner the market on a commodity and it happened.

Example. Investor starts to buy all the gold shares on the market which in turn drives up the price of gold and then it drives up the value of currency.
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Cornering a commodity is a danger, no question there. However, the materials used to back a currency should not even BE on the market. There should be no stock involved.

I was thinking about it....

And I think an even better solution would be to have a combination of gold standard and trade. Because I do acknowledge that gold may be a little too limited to use as a backing. So instead of just ONLY dealing in useless digital trillions, we could, for example, trade a certain number of goods with a country and maybe put some cash on top of it.

The problem with the pure trade system is that you may not always have goods that the other person wants in exchange. On a global scale, I don't really think this is as much of a problem. You already know what the other country wants. So just say ok fine, I'll trade you 100lbs of wood for your 100lbs of metal. Or whatever. You could make up any difference with gold backed cash.

This will also allow for more currency to be in circulation with the "little people."

Harry Guerrilla said:
Read about free banking, it is a much better idea in my opinion.
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The concept is good. But I think in practice it would just add a lot of extra red tape in the end. We are headed for a global economy. Having individual banks distribute and print currency would be extremely hard to regulate. It'd be like separate state currencies all over again.
 
The entire market would never revert to the gold standard, but if you're smart you'll invest in gold. Don't invest in gold bonds and certificates, get the actual gold. You'll notice that the price of gold is skyrocketing, because all the smart people are putting their investments into something real.
 
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