Today, many seemingly sensible people on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in the United States, seem to think that the solution to any and all economic problems lies in returning to something called the gold standard. This is odd because apart from being a heavy, shiny rock, gold has no particular noteworthy features—besides being a major contributory cause of the two worst economic depressions in world history: the 1870s and the 1930s.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 485