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Why Gold?

In: The Gold Cartel

Author

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  • Dimitri Speck

Abstract

For hundreds of years gold and silver were synonymous with the term ‘money’. Most of the time payments were made directly with precious metals – for instance, with coins containing silver. However, bank notes backed by gold were often widely used as well. This was, for instance, the case in the ‘gold standard’, in which payment was not effected with physical gold, but the monetary unit (such as the ‘dollar’) was defined by a fixed weight of gold, and could be redeemed in gold on demand. It was completely outside the realm of the imaginable that it would ever be possible to pay with ‘unredeemable paper money’, and, historically, there were only very few temporally and locally limited episodes in which money was not backed by a commodity. Today, since the 1970s to be precise, one pays all over the world with money that is based on claims denominated in an abstract unit. It doesn’t convey any rights, except the right to exchange it for other claims of the same type.

Suggested Citation

  • Dimitri Speck, 2013. "Why Gold?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Gold Cartel, chapter 0, pages 1-4, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-28643-7_1
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137286437_1
    as

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