The entire appeal of gold is that it makes it difficult and expensive to increase the money supply. So much so that normally the money supply remains constant since there is usually little incentive to mine gold.
Regardless of how urgent and compelling the reasons may seem at the time to increase the money supply, it comes down to - you either have the gold bricks or you don't. You can't call them into being with a proclamation.
This may all seem very inefficient and stupid, and it is, but the cost imposed on the economy from money which doesn't act as a "store of value" is even greater. Through the long history of humankind gold, or something similar, is the only method of economic discipline which has been found to be effective with humans.
Long-term gold is a horrible investment. Consider . . .
A Roman gold coin, called the Aureus, weighed 0.234 Troy ounces. Today this amount of gold is worth $172 at a gold price of $734 US Dollars.
In 100 AD, an Aureus could purchase 200 pounds of wheat flour (or 400 liters of cheap wine).
Today, this amount of gold can purchase say 570 pounds of flour (or 400 liters of cheap wine for $734 would come out to $1.84 per liter - and I'll let you decide if that's more or less quality wise than a bottle of "two buck Chuck").
The decline in the gold price of flour reflects an increase in the mechanization and efficiency with which we produce flour today, compared with 1,900 years ago. We could review many other examples, but suffice it to say that Gold maintains its value over time.
But is it a good long term investment? In this example gold provided a return of 0.055% annually over 1,900 years. That has to be the worst positive investment return I've ever seen.
Gold is not an investment, gold merely provides discipline to human designed monetary systems which time has proven cannot find discipline in any other way.
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