The only way to have a REAL gold standard would be with the price of gold floating. This would then become the real measuring stick of monetary inflation. It could be done very simply today by setting a fractional gold amount equal to today's gold price based on the number of ounce of gold the government currently holds in reserve. As long as they did not print any more dollars the government would be fine as they would have gold backed dollars at whatever the world gold price would be. No one would convert their dollars to gold as there would not be any reason to do so as long as they did not print more. If they started printing dollars and debasing their value, then people would start converting to gold and they would have to quit or run the risk of running out of gold. That risk would be the limitation of printing.

Therein lies the problem. They don't want to quit printing dollars because that is the way they fund the deficit spending. If we went on a gold standard it would also require a balanced budget and no deficit spending. This is not acceptable to those in power.

It would not be any problem converting to a gold standard any day of the year. The printing presses would have to stop at that point and the budget balanced. That is not going to happen, at least not voluntarily. That is why government hates the gold standard. Not because it doesn't work, because it does and they do not want it to.......takes away all their freebee giveaways that gets them elected.

John