World Bank President: Revive the Gold Standard?
Goldbugs may rejoice!. In an op/ed in today's Financial Times, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, is advising that the Bretton Woods system for managing currencies should be revised including:
The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values. Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today.
However, a front page article in the Financial Times notes:
Although there are occasional calls for a return to using gold as an anchor for currency values, most policymakers and economists regard the idea as liable to lead to overly tight monetary policy with growth and unemployment taking the brunt of economic shocks.
Go here for the whole Zoellick FT op/ed.
As a reference, I include below a chart of the price of gold over the last 20 years:
