Commodity money (i.e. a gold standard) is beneficial to long-term, sustainable free trade

Hey Clsmooth, When you refer to "firing up the printing press" as a means to create money, I assume that means you are commenting on the issue of "inflation" in the economy. Historically, commodities of all types were made into money, gold, silver, bronze, copper, etc. This occurred mostly due to the face that at the time, they were durable. However, that does not mean that linking money to a commodity is a good idea. Rather, in today's economy when the market determines the price of the commodity, moving back into the gold standard would be a terrible idea. To begin, when you argue that the country would be better off using gold as a standard to back our currency, you forget that the country already tried that, and failed miserably. The system was called the Bretton Woods system, and it was killed 30 years after it's inception. The reason was because the government tried to control it's monetary policy while supporting free capital movement. This is referred to as the impossible trinity by economists. The US government would need to dramatically restrict financial market trade in order to make a gold standard work again... or the government would have to sacrifice all control of it's own monetary policy. Both of these scenarios hold very dire consequences to our economy. The Financial market is currently the very device that is driving our economy into recession today. The Financial market is also what helps push a market out of recession by providing loans to people who are on the verge of bankruptcy. If the government sacrifices either of the above powers that it has today, than the coming recession would be longer lasting, and deeper because the financial market would be unable to keep money flowing within the economy. This would cause more pain in the economy and would be worse for the people. Since moving off of the gold standard, recessions have been shorter and resulted in less damage to the economy than ever before. It is true that under a perfectly maintained fixed exchange rate (often backed by a commodity), inflation in an economy would be lower (but not nonexistent). However, certain levels of inflation have shown to be beneficial to the economy. Small to moderate changes in inflation have shown to increase employment in an economy and lead to other forms of internal growth. Because inflation is not even, it also allows for more expensive technologies to become naturally cheaper than other competitors. A fixed exchange rate regime could slow this economic growth down, and result in less jobs being created in the future. Finally, a note on exchange rate regimes and international trade. You asserted that an unbacked currency facilitates imports, which isn't true. An over valued dollar (which, on it's own, is completely independent of what our currency is backed by) facilitates imports. By having an overvalued dollar, the US products and services cost far too much for other countries to invest in, and allows for a high Balance of Payment deficit to which our country witnesses today. This is being corrected by the dollar being devalued significantly over the next year. As the value of the dollar declines, the exports in our country will become more competitive in the world market, and the economy will continue to grow. Having a fixed exchange rate wouldn't have allowed for that shift. I look forward to your response, but be sure not to confuse your economic terminology in your linkages. This topic is complicated, and unfortunately conspiracy theorists like Ron Paul tend to mix up the actual facts regarding exchange rate regimes as a means to misinform people on what is actually best for the economy.