Gold Standard: The Anchor Invoked When Money Loses Credibility

Gold Standard: The Anchor Invoked When Money Loses Credibility

Nobody is going back to the gold standard, and those who call for it as a solution probably know it. The intuition behind the discussion — that someone is printing money excessively, buying gold excessively, and the system is held up by smoke — isn't entirely false. The uncomfortable question that trinc is: if creating bills out of thin air is the problem, why is the focus always on the neighbor's printing press and never on one's own?

The short answer is that the narrative needs an external culprit. The long answer fills the lines that trinc.

Why the Gold Standard is Being Discussed Again

Gold returns to the center of conversation whenever confidence cracks. First, it was the dollar convertible into metal, then the dollar without backing, and now a desperate search for a substitute. In this context, it's often repeated that China is massively buying gold as collateral, that there are empty cities financed by credit, and that cryptocurrencies were born as an alibi for the same game.

The problem is that gold has no intrinsic value. Its value lies in everyone believing that others will accept it. That confidence cannot be decreed. A metal doesn't fix the underlying problem; at best, it captures it and puts it on display. Those calling for a return to the standard are actually demanding an external referee that no longer exists.


Money is Also Created Here: The Reserve Requirement That's Gone

If the enemy is the printing press, it's worth looking at the one at home. As argued in the debate, the reserve requirement was effectively eliminated in 2020: each bank loan creates a deposit out of thin air. It's not state money, it's endogenous money, but it is money created nonetheless. The difference with other countries isn't that some print bills and others don't, but the destination of that liquidity.

And here fits the catchphrase that summarizes half the discussion: they print money to make things; we print it to pay pensions. It might be a simplification, but it points to something significant: the suspicion that the pension system functions like a scheme requiring constant inflows to balance.

China: State Capitalism and Contentious Competition

The central accusation is state capitalism: low wages, marathon working hours, controlled and devalued currency, massive subsidies to strategic sectors. Some analyses call it institutionalized unfair competition; others recall that closing the monetary border doesn't fix anything if the problem is with the model, not the neighbor.

In terms of hard data, claims that need to be taken with a grain of salt circulate: that a coal power plant is built every four days and that in China, one retires at 60 with a gift of lung cancer. These are repeated estimates, not audited figures.

There's also a side effect that creeps into the same conversation: the idea that the system needs population to sustain pensions. It's argued that this mantra hides a demographic blackmail that suppresses wages and inflates housing demand. This is a recurring thesis, debated, and without statistical backing in the available material, not a proven fact.

The Real Standard Isn't Metal: Energy, Grain, and Chips

For the last half-century, the anchor was the petrodollar: barrel for dollars, dollars for debt, and aircraft carriers guarding Hormuz. That scheme is unraveling with the BRICS and gold-backed agreements. But gold is the flag, not the engine. What truly matters are four things: energy, grain and fertilizers, chips, and industrial capacity.

Whoever controls the barrel sets the price of the rest. Whoever controls the granary decides during famines. And whoever controls semiconductors —TSMC and ASML— holds the salt of the 21st century. That's the standard almost no one discusses openly.

What's True About the Antiestéticar of Collapse

Some argue that a monetary reset is approaching, while others respond that this reset has been announced for decades without arriving. Both can be true simultaneously: a system can be unsustainable for much longer than intuition suggests. History is full of slow collapses and prophets who got the 'what' right but the 'when' wrong.

Will we return to the gold standard? Most likely not, or not in the way imagined. The most plausible scenario is a mix of digital currency, gold as a last-resort reserve, and competing regional monetary blocs. If something collapses, it won't be because of the metal we choose, but because of the confidence we manage to sustain while the rest unravels.