APPARENTLY, while I was out on paternity leave, the Republican
Party flirted with adding a return to a gold standard to its
official platform, thereby touching off an online debate on the
merits of such a standard. Belatedly, I'd like to offer a few
thoughts.  First, this is a solution in search of a problem. One
big reason to tie money to a commodity standard would be to
limit its growth in order to protect against runaway inflation.
But we have learned that in most situations central banks are
more than capable of controlling inflation on their own, and
markets show no sign of a fear of looming high inflation. What's
more, history demonstrates that when push really comes to shove
governments will just jettison the commodity standard and print
money as necessary.  Alternatively, a gold standard can make up
a key part of a fixed-exchange-rate regime, as it did in the
classical gold era that persisted from the 1870s through 1914.
An important question, however, is just why one would want a
fixed-exchange-rate