In Gold We Trust? The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty (Kindle Single)

Today, gold bugs talk about gold having been money for millennia, which is actually rather misleading. For most of human history, the metal that was typically used as money was silver. By contrast, gold was too rare to be widely used in a liquid market (a necessary condition for a commodity to be money). Silver was more abundant and deposits of it

A combination of President George W. Bush's tax cuts and Obama's post-financial-crash stimulus had, in a decade, taken federal debt from 33% of US national income to 62% in 2010. Unreformed, it was projected to keep rising, to 90% in 2020

I think it's as clear as the nose on my face that the fiscal path we're on is simply not sustainable. And when I'm asked to describe the situation we face, to me, it's always like a cancer, and it's a cancer that truly is going to destroy this country from within." This was not some crazed right-wing extremist speaking, nor even Alan Simpson,

spending by America's Federal Government (adding in state and local governments significantly increased the total) was around 24% of national income whilst tax revenues were 15% of national income. That left a near-record peacetime budget deficit to be financed by borrowing of 9% of GDP.

In December 2010,

bad money drives out good, if they have the same value.

For a hard-core group of gold bugs fiat money is in so much trouble it is a matter of urgency that the world should return to the system of gold-backed money that dominated the global economy at the end of the 19th century. Much of their argument — made by the likes of the Gold Standard Now campaign — rests on gold's track record over many centurie

Gold's rise to ever higher prices has coincided with — and some would say, been driven by — a loss of faith in fiat money as doubts have grown about the basic economic competence of the world's most important governments and economic institutions, since the near-catastrophic meltdown of the financial markets in September 2008.

Silver money can claim a 5,000-year history. Gold money did not make its first appearance until two millennia later around 550 BC when, according to Herodotus, the Ancient Greek 'father of history', the King of Lydia (in modern day Turkey) started minting coins made of it.