Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"A gold standard simply means that your paper money is backed by gold, meaning there's a set price between the dollar, in our case, and gold. And people can - whenever they want to, if they feel like it – redeem their dollars for gold. Now, we went off the gold standard really in two phases; first, in the 1930s when the exchange rate, if you will, between the dollar and gold was altered and then in the 1970s, when the so-called gold window was finally closed. Now, advocates of a return to the gold standard say that it fundamentally restricts the ability of the government to print money, and therefore, it will limit high inflation and perhaps limit some of the massive lending that we've seen in recent years. Opponents say, however, that restricting the increase in paper money can still be accomplished outside the gold standard by the Federal Reserve. In fact, they show evidence of this by looking at the relatively low inflation rates we've had in the last 10 or 15 years. Opponents also say that if we had a gold standard, it would restrict the ability of the government to respond to economic emergencies like we have now. And indeed, some scholars - some economic scholars - say the fact the U.S. was on a gold standard during the so-called Great Depression actually contributed to making that downturn deeper than it would have been."