John Nash, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics, praised the gold standard in a recent talk at Fordham. Here’s an excerpt from the news report:
Nash said that various interest groups that subscribe to Keynesian, or short-term, economic theories have sold the public on the notion that inflation is acceptable or that “bad money is better than good money.” Such a notion, he said, led to the dangerous proliferation of bad mortgage loans–loans made on the gamble that house values would continue to rise and eventually turn a profit.
“A fixed-rate 30-year mortgage would be reasonable under the gold standard,” Nash said. “Now, there are variable rates, and adjustables, and convertibles, and it is very complicated” for homeowners to figure out what they are getting into. In fact, Nash said, nobody really knows the depth of the financial crisis.
