Video in which Bernanke talks about the history of the Federal Reserve, including the gold standard
http://federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/vlink.htm?bcpid=738917326001&bckey=AQ~~,AAAAD2CGfQE~,o7E-F2eteXOq24Nb1BSfw9-MMjWzkave&bcpid=720309829001&bckey=AQ~~,AAAAD2CGfQE~,o7E-F2eteXMoEVLLY98AnOfR2ME8A5iN&bctid=1520950833001
Transcript
http://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/chairman-bernanke-lecture1-20120320.pdf
Blog post by David Frum
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/21/ben-bernanke-smashes-the-gold-standard-standard.html
Excerpt from Frum's post:
"The key gold standard lecture starts around the 29:00 minute mark, with Chairman Bernanke noting just how inconvenient the system was:
"Gold Standards are far from perfect monetary systems… have to go to South Africa and dig up tons of gold, and move it to New York and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve bank of New York."
As Bernanke notes, you make a gold standard work by digging up a bunch of gold and moving it from one hole to another. If you also dig up more gold out of the ground, then that act of mining also changes the money supply.
It is not smart to tie American monetary policy to the rocks that get dug out of the ground. This is especially true in the modern day when most of the gold is being mined in response to demand from India and China. A new gold standard would effectively tie US monetary policy to the purchasing habits of Indian and Chinese consumers."
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