A Comeback for the Gold Standard?

From: The Daily Caller

On Wednesday, the world woke up to the Drudge Report featuring, as its banner headline, Steve Forbes, the CEO, editor, and former presidential candidate, predicting a U.S. gold standard within five years. And as liberal blogger Mike Konczal wrote last month: “Conservatives are . . . rallying around the gold standard wing of their party.”

Conservatives (among others) who are sickened by high unemployment and a runaway federal government should cheer the growing support for restoring the gold standard. But what’s behind the groundswell of support for the gold standard, and what does it mean?


The rally began last year when two groups (with which I am professionally associated) — American Principles Project and American Principles in Action — began promoting the gold standard. When joined by the Lehrman Institute’s web-based The Gold Standard Now (with which I am also professionally associated), the momentum grew notably stronger.

APP chairman Sean Fieler and APP policy director Jeffrey Bell appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page and elsewhere (as did APP advisor Charles Kadlec) making the case for gold. Conservative icon Lewis E. Lehrman, one of the two pro-gold members of the Reagan Gold Commission, also appeared, for the first time in decades, in The Wall Street Journal to argue the case for gold. That article was picked up by 4,000 other sites, and The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol responded by praising the gold standard on his blog.