{"id":30398,"date":"2018-02-01T07:11:05","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T12:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30398"},"modified":"2018-02-01T07:11:05","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T12:11:05","slug":"a-brief-and-messy-history-of-modern-gold-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30398","title":{"rendered":"A Brief (and Messy) History of Modern Gold Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"wrapper entry-header page-header\">\n<div class=\"title-with-sep single-title\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cobdencentre.org\/2018\/02\/a-brief-and-messy-history-of-modern-gold-standards\/\">A BRIEF (AND MESSY) HISTORY OF MODERN GOLD STANDARDS<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-media\">Although gold prices hit a new high in mid-January,\u00a0Americans, by and large, are still reluctant about gold. They don\u2019t quite \u201cget\u00a0it.\u201d This incomprehension is different than that of Americans not \u201cgetting,\u201d for example, bitcoin (as few seem to). They may understand gold as a safe haven that has always stood the test of time, war, crises, inflation, etc. Some also understand that no gold proponent advocates harkening back to a mythical 19th century gold hey-day (one that did not exist \u2014 certainly not consistently), or recommends re-issuing gold minted currency, or reverting to any kind of bimetallism (the 19th century norm).<\/div>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grids\">\n<div class=\"grid-8 column-1\">\n<div class=\"single-box clearfix entry-content\">\n<div class=\"body-content clearfix\">\n<p>That said, the \u201cbarbarous relic\u201d\u00a0view tends to persist. Overall, it is thought that gold simply has no place in a modernized (read: central bank-controlled) economy. Making matters more complex is the question of what is gold and what is not. The recent proliferation of gold derivatives, \u201cpaper gold,\u201d ETFs, certificates, bogus gold; the Chinese, the Russians, depleted reserves, actual supply make its study opaque and abstract. In light of this confusion, a basic overview of the role of gold in an economy, both in classic and modern terms, is in order:<\/p>\n<h4>The Complexity of the Age of Gold Standards<\/h4>\n<p>In the beginning of the modern economic era of the later 19<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0century, a pure \u201cgold standard\u201d\u00a0was never consistent. However, its rise to preeminence as \u2018the\u2019 pillar of sound economic theory was that of gold\u2019s role as a hedge against inflation and against Unsound Money \u2014 paper money easily manipulated to reckless credit whims. In this regard, the European central banks of the day were excellent watchdogs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A BRIEF (AND MESSY) HISTORY OF MODERN GOLD STANDARDS Although gold prices hit a new high in mid-January,\u00a0Americans, by and large, are still reluctant about gold. They don\u2019t quite \u201cget\u00a0it.\u201d This incomprehension is different than that of Americans not \u201cgetting,\u201d for example, bitcoin (as few seem to). They may understand gold as a safe haven [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7380,10617,1183,2500,15603],"class_list":["post-30398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cobden-centre","tag-economic-history","tag-gold-standard","tag-history","tag-marcia-christoff-kurapovna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30399,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30398\/revisions\/30399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}