The U.S. dollar needs a sound monetary foundation, and the urgency is greater than ever. The explosive growth of government and unrestrained deficit spending kicked into high gear by the Obama administration and the 111th Congress have exposed the dollar’s position as the world’s final money to be a central cause of instability. We will never rein in Washington’s spending and irresponsible, record-setting dollar creation by the Federal Reserve—or escape repeated liquidity-driven financial bubbles such as the 2007-08 residential real-estate crash—until we find a new standard of value that balances trade flows and gives our currency an intrinsic worth. Gold has successfully served this role in the past and can do so once again.
The Gold Standard 2012 project is advocating this solution, and reaching out to lawmakers to advance legislation that will put the U.S. back on the gold standard.
Contact Us:
Gold Standard 2012
1420 K Street, NW
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005
202-503-2010
202-503-2011 (Fax)
goldstandard@americanprinciplesproject.org
Staff and Executive Board
Sean Fieler is chairman of the American Principles Project. He is a board member of the Witherspoon Institute, Institute for American Values, and the Dominican Foundation. He is chairman of the Committee for Monetary Research and Education and regularly advises on financial markets and monetary policy.
Frank Cannon is the president of the American Principles Project. He is a veteran of numerous presidential and congressional campaigns. He has also directed several successful political action committees and redefined the use of grassroots coalitions in issue development.
Andresen Blom is executive director of the American Principles Project. He is a veteran of numerous political and grassroots efforts, from the creation of a national coalition to stop human trafficking to advising on several election campaigns.
Jeffrey Bell is policy director of the American Principles Project. He served as an issues adviser in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns and was the Republican Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 1978, in which he was one of the first candidates in the country to build a bid for major office around what became the Reagan tax cuts.
Rich Danker is project director of the Gold Standard 2012. He is a graduate of the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and Graziadio School of Business and Management and has worked in business-government relations and on economic policy.
Ralph Benko is the senior economic advisor to the American Principles Project. He testified before the U.S. Gold Commission and writes frequently about the gold standard, including its role in constitutional history. He is a principal in Capital City Partners, a Washington public affairs firm.
Board of Advisers
Gold Standard 2012 Board of Advisers
Lewis E. Lehrman, senior partner of L.E. Lehrman & Co. and chairman of the Lehrman Institute and former member of the U.S. Gold Commission
Dr. Manuel Hinds, the former finance minister of El Salvador and recipient of the Manhattan Institute’s 2010 Hayek Prize for his co-authorship of the acclaimed work Money, Markets, and Sovereignty; Arthur Laffer, chief executive of Laffer Associates and member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Advisory Board
John Mueller, director of the Economics and Ethics Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
Lawrence Hunter, Ph.D. economist and president of the Social Security Institute
Arthur Laffer, CEO of Laffer Associates and member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Advisory Board
Brian Domitrovic, Harvard Ph.D. historian, assistant professor at Sam Houston State, and author of Econoclasts: the Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution
Marc Miles, CEO of Global Economic Solutions
Charles Kadlec, author and longtime adviser to Jack Kemp
John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets.com and Forbes Opinions
This is such an important project for our nation’s children. Any attempt to stabilize the economy the right way–through the gold standard–will assist in this effort. Educating our nation’s teens with publications like The Conservative Teen is another excellent way to share this important message with the up and coming generation.
Gold Standard 2012 is definitely the way to go. My entire blog is about a practical, Constitutional program to implement the Gold Standard Now! I hope the Gold Standard 2012 and its supporters and backers will help execute the “Constitutional Solution” found at my blog at: . Herman Smith
In advocating the return to a ‘gold standard’ as the basis for the creation of ‘money’, I presume you are proposing that ‘money’ ought to be made of something of intrinsic value, and that it must be backed by a physical store of gold and fully interchangeable.
From a rational standpoint, this concept is illogical and impractical in terms of any form of growing economy.
We need to define what the purpose of ‘money’ really is and that can only be explained in terms of why ‘money’ is created in the first place.
“Money” is simply a convenient tool for the exchange of goods – in other words, it is a ticket system that allows people to buy and sell products rather than having to resort to a cumbersome barter system.
As such, ‘money’ is directly related to production and increasing production is the definition of a growing economy. However, the fundamental purpose of production is consumption – there is absolutely no point in producing anything if it is not going to be consumed’ and ‘enjoyment’ is part of the ‘consumption’ process.
A growing economy requires an expanding supply of ‘money’ tickets which should be directly related to the measure of production – where ‘production’ is defined in terms of goods and services required by the society. Those goods and services, along with the facilities related to them, represent the assets that justify the creation of a ‘sound’ money supply. This has nothing to do with gold or silver or any other physical metal. In fact, it is quite ridiculous to say that a society can only create a money supply if it has a store of gold available to define how many ‘tickets’ can be created. It is equally ridiculous to say that a given physical activity cannot be carried out if there is insufficient ‘money’ available. The quantity of gold has nothing to do with the level of production needed for a modern society.
The real problem relating to the supply of money occurs when its growth is divorced from the level of productive growth and consumer demand. This is part of the reason both banks and Governments have gotten into so much difficulty – they have allowed money to be created for a host of unproductive ventures, such as, wars and financial gambling, and generated levels of debt that have become unserviceable.
The other complication in respect to “money” is that its nature and purpose as a ‘ticket’ system has been confused by being seen as a “store of wealth”, which is the fundamental reason for advocating a “gold standard”. In actual fact, gold is worthless unless it can be exchanged for something of use and that brings us back to the production factor.