PEN-L
mailing list archive
[ Other Periods  | Other mailing lists  | Search  ]
Date:  [ Previous  | Next  ]      Thread:  [ Previous  | Next  ]      Index:  [ Author  | Date  | Thread  ]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Interesting new book?

At 03:20 PM 3/27/01 -0800, you wrote: 
Why a gold standard?  Why not, say, an oil standard? Or some other commodity
that's valued by "late" capital? Wasn't gold made the standard as a holdover
from some ancient metaphysics/superstition--it looks nice and has great
electrical properties but what's so great about it?


I guess any commodity will do, but I would guess that most of the world
would go back to tradition -- i.e., gold -- if "things fall apart." (With
oil, there might also be objections if Saudi Arabia became the world's
banker, while usually money is useless _per se_.) Maybe we should have an
experiment and see what happens...

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine


[ Other Periods  | Other mailing lists  | Search  ]