File this one under ideas I wish I'd had first. Barron Young Smith called up Jeff Frieden, a monetary expert at Harvard, and asked what would happen if we actually switched back to the Gold Standard. The answers were not encouraging. Recessions would be deeper and longer, responsibility for smoothing out the economy would shift from the Fed to the Congress, our exports would become pricier and more jobs would flee overseas, and banks would get a massive subsidy as they profit from the sort of deflationary tendencies te gold standard enourages. All in all, a stupid idea.
