Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Originally posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014
In the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (now Gemäldegalerie), Berlin, there resides a beautiful painting by Rembrandt, The Money Changer.
Rembrandt captures the golden candle light and yet one is struck by the complexities implied by the books and papers surrounding the money changer himself. Among the reasons why the classical international gold standard is superior to “floating” currencies is that gold provides a common monetary lingua franca in which all people, all over the world, may conduct honest commerce. Wikipedia defines “lingua franca” as
“A … bridge language, or vehicular language, is a language systematically (as opposed to occasionally, or casually) used to make communication possible between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.”
Gold repeatedly, throughout history, has proven itself to be the “vehicular language” of commerce par excellence. It is a neutral, non-national asset providing equal dignity to all currencies defined by, and convertible into gold. And gold possesses innate integrity.
The towering stacks of paper surrounding the money changer depicted by Rembrandt are an excellent metaphor for the monetary “Tower of Babel” effect that besets the world since the formal ending of the last remnant of the gold standard on August 15, 1971.
The inefficiencies caused by the inexorable fluctuations in the national units of account — fluctuating in value against one another (and against real goods and claims) — certainly are a contributing factor to the stagnant (and inequitable) growth of wealth that has beset the world under the “world dollar standard.” How much more beneficial for the workers of the world for our authorities to return to the elegant simplicity of the classical gold standard.
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