USATODAY: Republican presidential contenders who plan to appear at the Iowa Tea Party’s multicity bus tour during the next three weeks will find themselves pressed on an issue few have considered before they announced their nomination bids: How do they feel about the gold standard?
The tour, sponsored by the Iowa Tea Party and American Principles in Action, lists the return to the gold standard as a top issue that will be discussed during the 18-day sweep through the state with the first presidential contest…
Of those attending, only Johnson has come out strongly in favor of going back to the gold standard, a monetary policy where the value of currency is affixed to the weight of gold. The policy ended in the Nixon administration… (more)
EDITOR: Historians have placed much of the blame for the Great Depression on the constriction of growth resulting from insufficient gold being mined to support economic expansion. Growth requires an expanding money supply, otherwise the value of money soars while prices decline, driving up the real cost of borrowing money. (The buying power of the dollars you repay five years later is much greated than the dollars you borrowed. Even at zero interest, the cost is very high.)
For the USA, deflation would greatly increase the real cost of our national debt.
