As definition go, gold standard is the exchange of the country’s paper currency for a set amount of gold. The country that decides to use gold standard buys and sells gold at a price that is pre-determined. This price is what the country uses to determine the value of its currency.
An illustration serves as better way of understanding the value of currency. If USAdecides to use the gold system and sold the gold in its possession at $100 per once, the value of the USAcurrency would be 1/100th of ounce of gold. Simple, right?
What are the advantages?
The gold standard is claimed by critics as having the effect of stabilizing prices over long periods.The system is capable of limiting the power of the government by taking away the ability of the government to inflate prices and devalue currency by issuing excessive paper currency. (This can be viewed as an advantage and a disadvantage, advantage for the market, disadvantage to government control over the market).Economic growth is attributed to the use of the gold standard (debate about this is however ongoing)Governments are made to tow the line when it comes to government deficit spending (limits the amount of debt issued).The gold standard is a savior for savings since it protects them from loosing value in terms of inflation. Inflation in the country’s economy devalues the saving of the hard working citizens.Inelastic supply of money (thanks to the gold standard) which means that the credit is limited (sometime a good thing and sometimes a bad thing).
What are some problems?
The biggest challenge of this system is that the total amount of above-the-ground gold is too little to satisfy the money needs placed on a currency.Even the fact that gold is distributed unevenly over the globe becomes a big problem. Who gets what?Other things, the cost of mining the gold at times is not feasible compared with the deposit of gold in that area.Monetary policies could not be effectively used when it comes to treating economic crisis. This is due to the fact that the supply of gold determines the supply of money in the market.As economies grow, the money supply that is the fuel of the entire system should also grow. Failure of growth of money supply will effectively put a ceiling on the economic growth of the country.
The above advantages and disadvantages are just a sample of the various issues that the gold standard brought to the monetary system of the world.
The gold standard proved to be too troublesome in modern day financial structure and had to be scraped. Fiat currency issued through the central bank of states is chiefly the new money supply system in place.
Some are arguing that the gold standard needs to make its reappearance. The interesting thing, however, is that they do not supply the corrective measures to be taken to solve the above problems. They just do not want to see the governments issue currency and regulating money supply in the market.
Regardless, the gold standard proved to be too archaic to be feasible in modern day economics. The complexity of international money markets makes it impossible for the gold standard to satisfy all parties involved.