The United States needs a "commission on gold to look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money."
Is that you Ron Paul? Nope. It's Gingrich.
The former Speaker of the House has spoken in favor of a "hard money" policy in the past, but went further in a foreign policy forum in South Carolina in January.
Gingrich would model his "gold commission" after one put in place after Ronald Reagan was elected, when the nation was battling double-digit inflation. Even then, the commission overwhelmingly rejected the idea of a return to the gold standard.
Only two members of the 17-member commission endorsed a return to the gold standard -- and one of them was Paul.
More recently, the University of Chicago posed the same question to a group of 40 economists. None endorsed a return to gold.
"Why tie to gold? Why not 1982 Bordeaux?" quipped Richard Thaler, a professor at the university's Booth School of Business.
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