"Fall of the Republic:The Presidency of Barack Obama"

It is not worthless. Try to understand--there isn't enough gold in the world to back up our currency. All the gold ever mined if made into bricks would make a cube about 85 feet per side. That's less than a third needed to build the Washington monument.

Money is just a representation of value and the value of this nation is immense. Not only is most money not gold or silver, it is not currency either. Only 8 percent of the world's currency exists as physical cash. The rest exists only on a computer hard drive, in electronic bank accounts around the world.

To stay on the gold standard for as long as we did (and we were one of the last) we had to forbid private ownership of gold which could be confiscated.

It's backed by the political stability, active commerce, huge economy, and physical security of the United States of America. The value of money is based on our perception of its worth.

 

1. Gold is a valuable and useful commodity. If we had to use the entire worlds supply to back up currency then it would be too expensive to ever actually use for electronics, chemistry, jewelry, etc. It would be wasted.

2. If money were tied to gold then economies could never grow. Amazingly expensive and slow gold shipments would have to be made between countries instead of instant electronic transfers.

No, why would you imagine that?

Money is basically a way to value something. In a dynamic economy, both the amount of money and the value of the monetary unit must be allowed to float. It is the responsibility of each nation to insure that the confidence in its currency remains high, and that the value of its monetary unit is neither overpriced nor underpriced.

Balance is always the key. If gold, platinum, or fairies wings were the standard then we could never move the fulcrum to achieve the balance.