AHC: Keep to the gold standard

Is there any way possible for the world economies to keep to the gold standard? OR even a gold and silver standard? Anything that would prevent the rise of fiat currency. Is it even economically feasible?
 
Is there any way possible for the world economies to keep to the gold standard?


Possible? Sort of. Plausible? No.

Is it even economically feasible?
Absent preventing the Industrial Revolution and/or the "consumer explosion" which preceded/fed/was a part of/resulted from that revolution? No.

Developed and developing economies need flexibility and specie-based currencies are flexible in all the wrong ways.

Keep the world at or near the subsistence level agriculture model and you can keep a gold standard forever.
 

Anderman

Donor
The only way to stay on the gold standard is to prevent WW1 or have only have a short war.
Without the money printing no power could finance the war and after the WW1 and WW2 permanent inflation is needed to finance the welfare state.
 
The only way to stay on the gold standard is to prevent WW1 or have only have a short war.
Without the money printing no power could finance the war and after the WW1 and WW2 permanent inflation is needed to finance the welfare state.
WI there is no welfare state?
 
The only way to stay on the gold standard is to prevent WW1 or have only have a short war.


WW1 simply drove home the need to move of a specie standard faster, it didn't create the economic need for a fiat currency in the first place.

The worth inherent in a nation's economy is eventually going to grow beyond the worth of the amount of specie it holds. If you limit the total worth of a nation's currency to the total worth of the specie it has on hand, you're going to throttle the economy in question.

In actuality, nearly all industrial nations had partially and unofficially abandoned specie standard currencies in the late 1800s. You could swap a pound or dollar for a given amount of gold, but neither the UK or US actually had an amount of specie on hand to convert all the paper currency they had in circulation into specie.
 
Top