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you gold bugs have been advocating in one form or another the devine pragmatism for returning to a gold standard to overcome our present woes and for returning stability to the international monetary system - indeed many of the arguments are compelling and make plain good sense on paper...
but let me pose this question - no doubt it has been posed before - about whether there is any inherent upside towards stability if instead of using the medium of gold, the medium of the US dollar is used, given the overwhelming use and in fact respect it has already established for itself - and here's my point - in every country about the globe... because it has transpired beyond a shadow of a doubt that this planet's 'go to' medium of exchange has and is the USD$ whenever any other currencies falls into doubt...
now going to a new gold standard would require every country to respect one medium for pegging their currency to - somewhat one step removed from the action of actually dealing in the currency that is said to be pegged to the shiney metal - however, just as you could maybe convince everyone to get on board with respecting anew gold as the backdrop by which to measure value, i simply put it out there that wouldn't it be far simply to say - "hey... let's stop kidding ourselves... we can introduce a gold standard by which to set values, but those of us holding USD$ are still going to be seen as holding the next best value to gold, before we recognise whatever currency you're holding... so let's cut to the chase and just have everyone holding USD$... then we'd only need a co-ordinated international system of banks to set charges for controlling trade balances between nations, and the better we can hope to reach a Ricardian way of balancing resources and production between nations..."
now i know by writing this there will be a tendency in many to either, a) shoot me down for being some advocate for some secret sect of international bankers who want to control humanity, b) post a zillion URLs directing me to those eminently more qualified than i who have in a previous time and place dealt with this subject, c) tell me that it must be gold, can only be gold, and there is no better standard than gold....
ok... get that off your chest if you must...
but returning to my point - as much as man has chosen to give gold a timeless intrinsic value, i am also contending that man can equally choose to grant a single currency the same honour if it does so for only one currency...where control over the supply of that currency must and can in real terms be controlled to a similar degree as the control over gold 'production' - for my issue is that gold is very unequally distributed about the globe, whereas the USD$ could much more easily be distributed and/or exchanged in the place of currencies that would be surrendered for it, where thereafter the USD$ can be more easily controlled on a global scale in terms of supply, and on a quantity of supply basis comensurate with the needs of exchange in international cross border transactions....
... so there you have it, a little friday afternoon missive i needed to get out of my typing fingers - i would of course be interested in seeing any references to any monetary authority who has ever tossed this ball around in the past, and particularly of recent...
...anyway, somebody has to keep the sacrilege going...
good luck
