The Gold Standard

Here is my favorite gold standard political cartoon from an 1896 Harper's Weekly.

The cartoon shows godlbugs as widows, orphans and veterans. In other words, people living on fixed incomes. It reflects the view that the primary benefit of a gold standard was to place a constraint on the money supply.

However, from the St Louis Fed on U.S. economic performance under the gold standard from the St. Louis Fed: "the historical evidence indicates that neither a gold standard nor the absence of a central bank guarantees economic or financial stability."