Goofy Gold

It’s remarkable that several Republican presidential candidates advocate a return to the gold standard. Doing so would outsource our money supply growth and thus monetary policy to the world’s largest gold producers including China, Russia, Peru and South Africa. And even a return to the quasi-gold standard of the Bretton-Woods system, which ran from 1945-1971, operated under the watchful eye of the IMF, not an institution congressional Republicans particularly value.