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The currency does not float, but rather, maintains a fixed value
(exchange rate) with some benchmark. In the process, the government
(ideally) gives up all attempts at manipulating the domestic economy
via some sort of discretionary “monetary policy.” This is a very common
arrangement today, with a currency typically being linked, via a
currency board for example, to the dollar or euro. These are “dollar
standard” or “euro standard systems.” The dollar or euro is the
“standard of value.” A “gold standard” system is pretty much the same
thing, but using gold as the “standard of value” rather than the dollar
or euro. Thus, instead of the 655.957 Central African
CFA Francs-per-euro ratio
used by the CFA Franc “fixed value” euro standard currency board
system, you have $20.67 dollars per ounce of gold, used by the United
States’ “fixed value” gold standard system, during the 1834-1933 period.
2. A gold standard isn’t
particularly expensive. A
gold standard system doesn’t “cost” anything at all. It makes a profit.
This profit is known as “seignorage.” If one uses the roughly 20%
bullion reserve coverage common to gold standard systems in the 19th
century, then the seignorage profit is equivalent to the interest
income on the 80% of reserve assets typically in the form of debt
instruments. This is less than if 100% of reserve assets were
interest-bearing debt, as is common today, although the difference
between 80% and 100% is really not very important. It is certainly
possible to make gold standard systems with 90%+ or even 100%
interest-bearing reserve assets, just as today’s currency boards have
nearly 100% interest-bearing assets. I explain how to do this in my
book Gold: the Monetary
Polaris.
Some have focused on the “societal cost” of a gold standard system –
namely, the effort of digging gold out of the ground. Yet, gold mining
never ceased after the end of the Bretton Woods gold standard
arrangement in 1971. Gold mining production today is about double what
it was in 1970. About 48% of all the gold ever mined, in all of
history, was mined after 1971.
In 1850, about 27% of all the gold in the world was in the form of gold
coinage and central bank or government reserves. Today, after over
forty years of floating currencies, the percentage is about the same.
3. Gold supply “shocks” weren’t
particularly shocking.
The supply/demand situation for gold is very different than for an
industrial metal like copper. Nearly all the gold ever mined, in human
history, exists today in the form of bullion and jewelry. Annual mining
production increases this amount by about 2% each year. Very little of
annual mining production, under 10%, goes into “industrial” uses of
gold such as electronics (and also including dentistry) where gold is
potentially “consumed.” Even with these industrial uses, quite a bit of
that gold is later recovered from scrap recycling. Thus, the “supply”
of gold is fifty times greater than annual production, and also about
500 times larger than “industrial” uses, not even including scrap
recycling from industry. If annual production were to somehow double
(which is not so easy because it takes years of capital investment and
construction to make a large-scale gold mine), then “production” of
gold would be about four percent of “supply.” And if gold mining were
to somehow cease altogether (not likely since gold is produced all over
the world), we would still have “inventory” of fifty times annual
production. In the last 165 years since 1850, annual production of gold
worldwide has never been greater than 3.5% of existing supply, and
never less than about 1.2%. Since 1950, things have calmed down even
more, with production never exceeding about 2.2% of supply. (All graphs
are from Gold: the Monetary Polaris.)
For copper, on the other hand, “supply” and “annual production” are
virtually the same thing. Also, virtually all of copper “demand” is for
industrial uses such as tubing and wiring. Known inventories of copper
amount to about
two weeks of industrial demand – compared to 500 years
for gold. Obviously, this creates a situation where variance in either
mining output or industrial demand, or things like civil unrest in
major copper-producing areas, can cause quite a lot of price
variability for copper.
These practical factors are some reasons why people have long observed
that gold’s value is stable, in a manner that is not true of other
commodities. As a result, gold has been an excellent benchmark of
monetary value, and served well as the “standard of value” for
centuries. I might even claim that gold is more stable in value than
the dollar or euro, which are today serving as a “standard of value”
for a great many currencies.
One of the biggest surges in global gold production began around 1850.
This was caused by a confluence of new discoveries and also production
methods that took advantage of the new industrial techniques of that
time. Gold production in the 1831-1840 decade has been estimated at
0.65 million ounces per year. In 1853, production made a momentary peak
of an estimated 7.3 million ounces –- about eleven times greater.
But, even this giant increase in production brought annual output only
to 3.3% of the estimated 221 million ounces of aboveground gold in the
world at that time. So, maybe it wasn’t that big a deal. Is there any
evidence that it was a big deal?
Let’s look at the price of other commodities, as measured in ounces of
gold. Commodity prices can be a little confusing, because the United
States devalued the dollar beginning in 1861 to pay for Civil War
expenses. Also, a civil war can create some influences on commodity
prices (to put it very mildly) that are not monetary in nature.
 
Nevertheless, we find that there is almost no change in U.S. commodity
prices from the 1830s to the 1850s, compared to gold. Most of the
variability here is related to wars, namely the Napoleonic Wars in
Europe in the early 19th century, and World War I.
We find the same thing in Britain. No change.
What about the flood of gold and silver that came from the New World
during the 15th century? Did that show up in commodity prices? Here is
some data from Britain:
Not a whole lot of variance there either.
People have used gold as money for a very long time – about as long as
people have been able to produce gold. Mesopotamians used a gold and
silver standard (most historical systems were essentially bimetallic)
in 2500 B.C. Chinese made gold coins in the 6th century B.C. Greeks and
Romans used gold as money; so did Persians and Egyptians. Japanese used
gold powder as money in the seventh century A.D. The Aztecs used gold
powder, and small gold figurines, as money.
We are told today that this was due to a “superstition” or an
“obsession” — as if Chinese and Romans and Aztecs all had the same
“superstition,” for five thousand years. So did the Persians, Arabs and
Indians. Doesn’t that sound a little stupid to you? It does to me. I
propose something else: that it worked. It worked so well that, for
five thousand years, nobody ever found a better solution.
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