Persons familiar with my writings on monetary reform know that, far from being anyone's idea of a gold bug, and despite my conviction that those monies work best that governments govern least, I've always shied away from arguing that we ought to re-establish a gold standard. Instead,…
I gave the following talk this morning at the Heritage Foundation Conference on a Stable Dollar, held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington, VA. I'm going to talk about some of the choices we face among monetary regimes, including choices among various types of gold standards. But…
Jon Catalan and David Glasner made comments about my post on free banking and the historical gold standard that are worth responding to, so here are some further thoughts on the subject. Jon asked what influence Britain had on the world gold standard before World War I….
Over at his recently established blog "Uneasy Money," David Glasner has a post on "Gold and Ideology." (He has started fast out of the gate, writing prolifically; I hope he doesn't burn out, but there's a lot to write about when the subject is money.) He claims…
Says the NYTs today, "On July 9, 1896, William Jennings Bryan caused a sensation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with his "cross of gold" speech denouncing supporters of the gold standard. Bryan went on to win the party's nomination." We should add that he lost…