The Saver Quiz

Get to know more about stable money by taking this short quiz.

Who are the ultimate creators of monetary value?

1. Governments
2. Central Banks/Federal Reserve
3. People

Answer: 3.

What gave gold its stable value for thousands of years?

1. Governments
2. Banks
3. People
4. The steady increase in gold production

Answer: 3. People needed a stable medium of exchange and gave gold this characteristic.

True or False?

Since 1947 the US dollar has lost on average 33% of its value every 10 years.

Answer: True. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL

True or False?

The most prosperous periods in history have been when there was a stable, no inflation, currency instead of a floating currency as we have today.

Answer: True. See Nathan Lewis Gold The Final Standard

True or False?

Except when linked to a source of stable value such as silver or gold governments have for the most part been unable to resist the temptation to debase their currency by printing more.

Answer: True. The first coins in Lydia in the 7^th Century B.C. are also likely to be the first example of currency debasement. See Nathan Lewis Gold The Final Standard

True or False? 

Stable Money is good for the economy.

True. For example the decline of Rome coincided with the Nero (54-68) being the first to devalue the coinage of Octavian. Closer to our times the era of the gold standard up until the First World War was one of the most prosperous in history. The English financial journalist Hartley Withers summed up the working of London’s monetary and financial system before 1914 in one word. The word was “perfect”. Nathan Lewis, Gold the Final Standard p.136.

U.S, Britain and Germany: Industrial Production , 1880-1913 Source: https://newworldeconomics.com/economic-ups-and-downs-1870-1914/

True or False? 

Stable money is good for people.

True. For example real wages in the US peaked in 1971 just as President Nixon took the country off the gold standard.

“Nothing places the farmer, the wage-earner, and all those not closely connected with financial affairs at so great a disadvantage in disposing of their labor or products as changeable ‘money’.” Andrew Carnegie. Nathan Lewis, Gold the Final Standard p.222.

True or False? 

Stable money is good for social values.

True. “As currency values are no longer fixed to long-held and commonly agreed-upon absolutes, like gold, but become changeable and relativistic, so too moral values become changeable and relativistic, provisional and expedient.” Nathan Lewis, Gold the Final Standard p.221.

“No man of spirit will consent to remain poor if he believes his better to have gained their goods by lucky gambling. To convert the business man into a profiteer is to strike a blow at capitalism, because it destroys the psychological equilibrium which permits the perpetuance of unequal rewards.” John Maynard Keynes 1923 quoted in Nathan Lewis, Gold the Final Standard p.222.