“William Jennings Bryan.”
William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist Christian who used Christian imagery in his political campaigns on a regular basis. He got a bad rap from his sorry defense of the Young Universe in the Scopes trial, as he actually cared a lot about the well being of those less well off — and his religion was the basis for that caring. He could not have been more opposite to Ayn Rand.
“Had no idea what a gold or silver standard was or why it mattered, and still don’t really.”
Basically, the idea is that the government only issues currency to the extent that it holds these precious metals. Until the 1960s, you could actually take a Silver Certificate to the Treasury and redeem it for silver; until the 1930s you could take a Gold Certificate and redeem it for gold.
But it didn’t work very well. It limited the amount in currency in circulation and that led to serious deflation which destroyed the lives of anyone in debt. During the time when the US was on a pure metal standard with no central bank (basically, 1836 to 1914, with the exception of the American Civil War) there were repeated financial panics that a lack of liquid cash in the economy made much worse. It was not until the Panic of 1907 that the robber barons realized that their own prosperity was entirely dependent on the welfare of the country as a whole, that they accepted the idea that the money supply had to grow if the country was to grow. The result was the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which allowed the government again to print large amounts of paper currency. That proved essential at the beginning of World War I, as the warring powers withdrew all their hard (backed by metals) money from the US economy. Treasury secretary William McAdoo had to close the stock market for four months to prevent disaster, and the paper money allowed by the Aldrich-Vreeland Act saved the livelihoods of millions of Americans. Shortly thereafter, the Federal Reserve System was put into place (it had already been enacted into law but wasn’t yet operating at the time of the crisis) and since then most US currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States rather than metal in vaults.
The United Kingdom tried to go back onto the gold standard in the late 1920s; Winston Churchill, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer and in charge of this effort, later said it was the worst mistake of his life.
For the US to go back on the gold (or silver) standard today would be unthinkable except in the minds of those right wing nutcases who live in an alternate reality. These commodity markets are subject to wild fluctuations and at times actual manipulations by speculators. Why, just in the past two work days, the price of gold has dropped 13%! The total gold reserves of the United States are now valued at approximately $365 billion. However, there is currently approximately $1.18 trillion in US dollars in circulation. To reduce the amount of money supply by almost 70% would completely destroy the economy of not just the United States but that of the entire free world.