In December 2010,

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,

"coin clipping"

According to the World Gold Council, the "golden constant" is reflected in the fact that an ounce of gold was worth a "mid-range outfit of clothing" in the 14th Century, in the late 18th Century, and in the first few years of the 21st Century. The price of that outfit in fiat currency, by contrast, has increased many times over.

The year before John Paulson decided, in the spring of 2009, to give investors in his hedge funds the option of having their returns measured and paid in gold, he had made a fortune for himself and his clients by betting on the value of America's housing markets and banks. Now he was betting that an even more basic product than housing — money itse

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

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.

Inflation has been an economic taboo since the 1970s but maybe not for much longer. Government and citizens alike are now much more indebted than they were at the start of the Great Depression. In such circumstances, inflation could come to seem positively desirable, especially for borrowers, as it would erode the value of their debts in real terms

The first big breakthrough in solving this problem was turning pieces of metal into coins, and certifying their weight and purity by stamping them with a mark — typically in the form of some ruler's head. Thus government got drawn into the business of guaranteeing the soundness of money.