Democratic and populist leader William Jennings Bryan, climaxed his career when when he gave his famous “Cross of Gold” speech which won him the nomination at the age of 36.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (well, OK–at the risk of continuing to sound like a broken record), I’d like to say a bit more about economists’ tendency to get their monetary history wrong. In particular, I’d like to take aim at common myths about the gold standard.
If there’s one monetary history topic that tends to get handled especially sloppily by monetary economists, not to mention other sorts, this is it. Sure, the gold standard was hardly perfect, and gold bugs themselves sometimes make silly claims about their favorite former monetary standard. But these things don’t excuse the errors many economists commit in their eagerness to find fault with that “barbarous relic.” Continue reading
I wonder why this is never mentioned in history classes in the US.
Researching economic publications on the first century of the 
After the Roaring Twenties, a decade of partying, lavish living and social and cultural change, Americans thought the rising stock market and good times would last forever.
Government data indicate that the U.S. remains far from winning the longest war in its history: the war on poverty.
The most perfect monetary system humans have yet created was the world gold standard system of the late 19th century, roughly 1870-1914. We dont have to hypothesize too much about what a new world gold standard system could look like. We can just look at what has already been done.
In the latter months of the year 1863, only two years after the beginning of the great struggle which has lately terminated, and long before there was any doubt, in the Southern Confederacy, of its final success, its paper currency had depreciated to an extent which made it almost valueless. This was looked upon as the natural and inevitable consequence of its excessive redundancy, but that redundancy was not the only reason of its depreciation, because it would have depreciated without it, although to a much less degree. We believe it may be laid down as an almost settled axiom, without much fear of any successful refutation, that depreciation is of the very essence of paper money, whether it exceeds or not the wants of the community where it is current-that its over-issue only accelerates, or increases the depreciation-and that the depreciation becomes still more rapid and fatal when that paper, either by the action of Government, or from the no less powerful dictates of circumstances becomes a forced currency.
By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled “An Act to Provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes,” in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section do hereby 
