Skeptic Project

This afternoon on Fox News, host Stuart Varney and the network's senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano had "The Gold Standard Debate."

Napolitano, an advocate of returning to the gold standard, laid out his case for Varney, though he conceded there is currently a "lack of momentum" for the idea. Varney agreed that the country won't go back to the gold standard "just like that."

"That is not going to happen," Varney said. But he did venture another idea:

"I can see the creeping use of gold as a medium of exchange," Varney said. "For example, we're about to see, on the streets of two cities in America, vending machines where you can put your dollars in and get out small amounts of gold."

Varney must have been alluding to Gold to Go, gold vending machines produced by a German company. The machines are currently installed in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. CNBC reported in September that the company plans to issue machines in Florida and Las Vegas soon.

"Would you use one of those machines?" Napolitano asked.

"I certainly would," Varney replied. "This is the first step towards using gold as a currency."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/fox_news_discusses_return_of_gold_as_everyday_curr.php?ref=fpc

Ironically fiat money shows how human ingenuity created a cheap substitute for a scarce resource. Western gold obsessives probably don't like China's stranglehold on the supply of rare earth metals - they fear China's policy will hold the world's economy back. Yet in the absence of economical alternatives to these metals - something like "fiat rare earths" - China's monopoly resembles what could happen if we arbitrarily chain the world's economy to a finite supply of gold.

I assume their plan is to keep the asset-backed gold in the hands of the elite white males while everyone else becomes a slave. There's probably plenty of gold for them in that scenario.