Ah, yes. There isn't just the one bogeyman out to get you and your money, there are many. And gold is the magical cure-all for all of them.
Like most fringe-Libertarian financial thought, it simply isn't rational. That irony always amused me.
The bottom line is that risk is a fact of life in general, and finances in particular. Gold won't change that. In many ways, gold will increase the risks.
"But... but... but... gold is GOLD. Gold is BETTER. Goldstandardhyoperinflationgovernmentisevilblaaarrg!"
Pfft, avoiding the issue doesn't make your case (or lack thereof) stronger.
Yes, there are boogeymen in the world today who wish to deprive you of the fruits of your labor. Making light of that fact does not change it. Having a currency based on a hard commodity ties inflation to that of the commodity, not to the whims of a few. Neither does it much matter if the chosen commodity is gold, silver, copper, etc. Denying that the current debasement of the US dollar was made possible by decoupling it from the gold standard is to deny reality. Is a metal-based commodity a perfect solution? No. Is it better than the current fiat model? By far.
We've been around and around on this one many times. I forgot that you're new here, and probably haven't done this yet.
The money base must be expandable. That's an economic reality. If it's expanded too fast we have inflation, which is bad. But if it isn't expanded fast enough, or if it isn't expanded at all, we have deflation. Deflation is probably worse than inflation. Just ask Japan. Or FDR.
The Federal Reserve system allows the money base to be expanded deliberately and intelligently. We may debate the rate at which to expand the money supply. Different people have differing ideas. But you cannot deny that the Fed can expand at whatever rate it chooses. Nor can you deny that they employ many of the world's best economists and financial minds expressly for the purpose of trying to figure out just how much expansion we need.
Your alternative, the gold standard, ties money base expansion to the rate the gold-mining nations wish to allow their gold onto he open market. They would literally have the power to cripple our economy. Even if the Ruskies and Chicoms and South Africans did have our best interests at heart, they still couldn't produce enough gold to preserve our economy and prevent crippling deflation. The money base is simply too big, and the necessary money base expansion would swallow up worldwide annual gold production.
Even if a gold standard were possible, and even if the Chicoms and Ruskies were acting in our best interests (neither of which will happen in our lifetime, but let's pretend for just a moment), the gold standard still wouldn't solve the problems you've listed throughout this thread. The stock market would still fluctuate, causing people with investments to lose value. Fraud would still exist, and Worldcoms and Enrons would still happen. Inflation would still be possible, and its magnitude would be far more volatile than our fiat-system inflation. Wild bouts deflation would also occur with alarming frequency. That would make it impossible to make any long-term economic decisions, which would cripple investment and the economy at large.
Once you remove all of the anti-government conspiracy theories and paranoia, the gold standard becomes far less appealing. A rational, unemotional, objective assessment shows that the question isn't whether the gold standard is better than the Federal Reserve system. That was long-ago decided in favor of fiat money. The real question is how best to manage the Federal Reserve system. A reasonable monetary policy absolutely stomps all over the gold standard, plain and simple.
