by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
Elites are extremely hostile to the idea that gold should have any role whatsoever in the monetary system. To them, gold is truly a barbarous relic, as John Maynard Keynes was supposed to have said. You might as well propose bringing back the horse and buggy.
Except Keynes never said gold was a barbarous relic.
What he did say was more interesting. In his 1924 book Monetary Reform, Keynes in fact wrote “the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.”
Keynes was discussing not gold, but the gold standard. There might not seem to be a difference, but there is. In the 1924 context, he was right.
The classical gold standard ended in 1914 with the outbreak of WWI. To pay for the war, combatants printed massive amounts of money.