The Gold Standard 

The tales emerging from the Occupy Wall Street movement have a certain quaintness, as a mixture of aging anarchists and baffled Main Streeters offer dazzlingly offbeat solutions to genuine concerns.

Take the OWS protester spotted in downtown Washington, D.C., the other day who refused to answer an interviewer’s questions until the reporter plucked a stone from the pouch he was wearing. As the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto describes it, the stone-bearer, a young man named Kyle Szlosek, proceeded to intone, “Tha Read more

Three Republican presidential candidates—Herman Cain, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich—have at least hinted about the desirability of a return to the gold standard. The four top Republican congressional leaders recently called on the Federal Reserve to curb its interventions in the U.S. economy. In early October the Heritage Foundation held a two-day sound money conference in which both keynote speakers—New York investment banker Lewis Lehrman and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes—called for adoption of a gol Read more

In just four months people in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will cast the first decisive votes in the race for the White House.

By then the field of contenders for the Republican nomination will have winnowed, perhaps significantly. It is likely that the positions each candidate takes — particularly on the economy — will determine where they are in this process. Those candidates seeking an edge in the early voting states could put themselves out in front of the pack if they were to advocate gold-backed money as a Read more

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has come under intense pressure to cease commenting on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's monetary policy for the remainder of the presidential campaign. He should ignore such advice.

The wheels have come off American monetary policy. The troubled era that began with the sharp decline in this country's residential real estate market in 2007 became a collapse in the liquidity of U.S. banks — a classic financial/monetary crisis. Yet the monetary gyrations that were the immediate cause of Read more