Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Interesting new book?

[Jim Devine]

At 03:20 PM 3/27/01 -0800, you wrote:
>Why a gold standard?  Why not, say, an oil standard? Or some other commodity
>that's valued by "late" capital? Wasn't gold made the standard as a holdover
>from some ancient metaphysics/superstition--it looks nice and has great
>electrical properties but what's so great about it?

I guess any commodity will do, but I would guess that most of the world 
would go back to tradition -- i.e., gold -- if "things fall apart." (With 
oil, there might also be objections if Saudi Arabia became the world's 
banker, while usually money is useless _per se_.) Maybe we should have an 
experiment and see what happens...

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine