<blockquote>"[Mises] followed with great concern how the American monetary system, and the global monetary system built on it, unraveled all through the 1960s" - Jörg Guido Hülsmann,
The Last Knight, page 1030
"
Those ascribing inflow and outflow of money in or out of a country to the sales and purchases of the country’s inhabitants are committed to a fallacy. They assume that the size of an individual’s cash-holding is not planned by the man but is merely the unintentional outcome of his buying and selling. ... If our civilization will not in the next years or decades completely collapse, the gold standard will be restored."
- Ludwig von Mises, 1965 (Quoted:
The Last Knight, page 1031), emphasis added</blockquote>
***<blockquote>"
China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years."
- Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, 2009 (Quoted:
A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?)</blockquote>
Russia backs return to Gold Standard to solve financial crisisRussia has become the first major country to call for a partial restoration of the Gold Standard to uphold discipline in the world financial system.By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
31 Mar 2009
SourceArkady Dvorkevich, the Kremlin's chief economic adviser, said Russia would favour the inclusion of gold bullion in the basket-weighting of a new world currency based on Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund.
Chinese and Russian leaders both plan to open debate on an SDR-based reserve currency as an alternative to the US dollar at the G20 summit in London this week, although the world may not yet be ready for such a radical proposal.
Mr Dvorkevich said it was "logical" that the new currency should include the rouble and the yuan, adding that "we could also think about more effective use of gold in this system".
The Gold Standard was the anchor of world finance in the 19th Century but began breaking down during the First World War as governments engaged in unprecedented spending. It collapsed in the 1930s when the British Empire, the US, and France all abandoned their parities.
It was revived as part of fixed dollar system until US inflation caused by the Vietnam War and "Great Society" social spending forced President Richard Nixon to close the gold window in 1971.
The world's fiat paper currencies have lacked any external anchor ever since. It is widely argued that the financial excesses and extreme debt leverage of the last quarter century would have been impossible - or less likely - under the discipline of gold.
Russia is a major gold producer with large untapped reserves of ore so it has a clear interest in promoting the idea. The Kremlin has already instructed the central bank of gradually raise the gold share of foreign reserves to 10pc.
China's government has floated a variant of this idea, suggesting a currency based on 30 commodities along the lines of the "Bancor" proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944.