More On Gold Standard Nonsense

Washington Post, via Ritholtz:

So, to recap, in 1981, amidst a serious inflation problem, Reagan created a commission to study a gold standard. You couldn’t have picked a more sympathetic president, or a more sympathetic moment, to the gold standard. And they still rejected it.
Now fast forward 30 years. There’s no inflation problem. The head of the Federal Reserve was originally appointed by George W. Bush and is credited by most observers as having headed off a potential Great Depression through creative monetary policy. And so what does the Republican Party want to do? Well, according to a draft of the party’s platform, they want another Gold Commission.
You might dismiss this as a meaningless capitulation to Ron Paul’s delegates. But that’s not what Rep. Marsha Blackburn, co-chair of the GOP’s platform committee, says. “These were adopted because they are things that Republicans agree on,” Blackburn told the Financial Times. “The House recently passed a bill on this, and this is something that we think needs to be done.”
One of those House Republicans is Paul Ryan. To my knowledge, Ryan has not, in fact, endorsed a gold standard. He’s too smart for that. Instead, he endorsed something that sounds better than a gold standard but is functionally identical. “The best way to guarantee sound money is to use an explicit, market-based price guide, such as a basket of commodities, in setting monetary policy,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

And no, I don't think Paul Ryan is too smart to endorse a gold standard.  I don't think he's all that smart at all.  If we see a deflation of commodity prices, we get deflationary tight money.  That makes a hell of a lot of sense.  Seriously, stable money should benefit people with lots of money already, not all the people with tons of debt.  It isn't too hard to figure out.  Republicans are looking out for the folks with the most money already, everybody else be damned.  God help us if they get in charge of things.