UK: The US right's desire for the gold standard

The Economist

The Republican fringe

Gold-plated nonsense

Aug 25th 2012, 10:54 by M.S.

 

 

ON CNBC early Friday, the topic was the Republican decision to set up a party committee to explore a return to the gold standard. The clips I've found of this discussion on the CNBC website (here and here) feature commentators appropriately noting that the idea is "ludicrous" (amusingly, the website's caption team has spelled it "ludacris"; someone younger than myself please insert an appropriate hip-hop-themed joke). But in the sequence I was watching on TV that didn't get picked up by the website, one of the channel's regulars (I didn't catch the name) said the attention was misplaced. The gold standard is "never going to happen", he said; it's "incredibly deflationary", the American government is never going to try to return to it, and the whole exploratory committee is just political tomfoolery we should all ignore in order to focus on real issues.

Read it at The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/08/republican-fringe