Currencies

Earlier this year, the Utah state legislature passed a law making gold and silver coins legal tender. Now, a Salt Lake City-area numismatist hopes to set up a system that will allow Utahans to use those precious metals to pay for anything they want.

Imagine a country that spends and prints trillions to patch up any problem.  Now imagine another country where there is no central Treasury, meaning that bail-outs are less easy, and which has a central bank that has mopped up liquidity over the past year, rather than engage in quantitative easing.

Gold was money long before currencies came into the fray but a look at how the world moved from a gold standard to the current situation provides some useful food for thought.