Give Us Gold Or Give Us Depression

That’s the message from Steve Forbes in his new book:

“The best way to achieve monetary stability: linking the dollar to gold,” he wrote in the book out today. “The Fed should have only two tasks: keeping the dollar fixed to gold and dealing quickly and decisively with panics,” he wrote, according to excerpts provided in advance to Secrets.

Forbes has long been a leading conservative voice on the economy, and his latest book is likely to revive calls for a gold standard.

“The refusal of many in the policy establishment to entertain the idea of a return to a gold standard is based on astounding ignorance about just what a gold standard would mean and how it would work,” he wrote in the new book.

The book is extremely critical of the Fed, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke and current Chairwoman Janet Yellen. “The Federal Reserve must stop trying to run the banking system and the economy.”

We don’t need a gold standard per se, but we do need a currency based on something the government can’t muck up. The problem is that Washington would rather be tasked with picking up the pieces of another depression — and not coincidentally, further and greatly enhancing its own scope and powers — than it would be tasked with implementing real solutions.