If were going to go back go to silver

Reader comment on: James Grant on Gold

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Nov 13, 2010 22:09

Gold was only a standard since 1873 before that the US was essentially on a silver standard. (There was not enough gold in the US). Since a major use of silver has gone away with the demise of film photography in favor of digital photography, silver is more like gold than ever before. (Both are used to a limited extent because they are good conductors in electronics) Silver however has a use in tableware that gold does not.

Of course if you read Lords of Finance, you see that from that point of view at least the Gold Standard was a fetish for the central bankers, and the sooner a country got off the gold standard the better its economy did. (UK did it before the US and did not remain as deep in the tank as the US).

The alternative that is better is a Platinum standard, or let's make it really fun, a gold, platinum, silver standard. Then we can have greshams law play out big time.

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