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Gold Standard

With the Gold Standard, the US economy would print currency that equaled a specific value of gold. Meaning, you could cash in your money for a specified amount of gold because a unit of currency = a specific amount of gold.

The limitations to Governments was that they could not spend what they wanted because the amount of currency in circulation had to correspond to the amount of gold in reserve. Nixon, eliminated the Gold Standard, I think during the Vietnam war. As a result, the currency in circulation today does not have to be backed up by anything, not gold, not anything. That's why we see trillion dollar deficits today. Politicians can spend what they want regardless of the real economic downfalls that eventually have to be dealt with. Nowadays, on a side note, our US debt is fianced by foreign governments such as the Chinese and others.
This means most of debt the US government owns is owed to foreign investers.

The answer to whether having Gold Standard is good or not is based on who you ask. Economists will have one answer, politicians will have another.

The phrase “gold standard” is defined as the use of gold as the standard value for the money of a country. If a country will redeem any of its money in gold it is said to be using the gold standard. The U.S. and many other Western countries adhered to the gold standard during the early 1900’s. Today, however, gold’s role in the worldwide monetary system is negligible. Britain abandoned the gold standard 1931; the USA abandoned it 1971. Holdings of gold are still retained because it is an internationally recognized commodity, which cannot be legislated upon or manipulated by interested countries. On August 15, 1971, the world entered the first era in its history in which no circulating paper anywhere was redeemable in gold, by anyone. At one point in time it was illegal for a U.S. citizen to own gold. President Richard Nixon of U.S. closed the “gold window.” This action broke the last tie between...