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Gold/Mining/Energy : At a bottom now for gold? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ahda who wrote (1765)	10/3/1998 9:40:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 1911

A gold standard traditionally just meant that central banks peddle gold out the back to the public. You could exchange currency for gold with a central bank directly at the local fed reserve bank. Nixon stopped that in 1971 which ended the 27 year reign of the Bretton-Woods price fixing agreement. Now you have to go to a coin shop. So what? The true standard is whether gold is allowed to fluctuate against currencies. Before Nixon closed the gold window, the price of gold was fixed by fiat at $20/oz or $35/oz or $42/oz depending what year this century. When this caused supply problems, the US essentially illegalized its possession. You couldn't be tracking in quantities of gold like a Goldfinger. The US still recognizes an official price of $42/oz and that's how the NY Fed evaluates it when they compute their interpretation of the monetary base. Since 1971 the price has been all over the place in terms of any currency. The price disciplines economies and central banks. That was the purpose of the gold standard of the past. The current de facto standard is much better. The FED watches it and gives it more weight than any other measure. They sure didn't do that during Bretton-Woods.