U.S. will return to a gold standard within the next five years

While Ron Paul is generally considered to be the foremost proponent of the gold standard, he has gained quite a bit of company in recent months. The idea of the United States returning to a gold standard is gaining considerable traction among many Republican 2012 presidential candidates.

Herman Cain was quoted recently as saying that “Our dollar is suffering. It’s similar to when we wake up in the morning, an hour is 60 minutes. We don’t have to go look in the paper to see what it’s worth. We’ve got to get back to a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. . . Yes, we do need a gold standard to do that.” Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, has called for “hard money with a very limited Federal Reserve.”

Steve Forbes – who ran for President as a Republican in 1996 and 2000 – earlier this year predicted that the U.S. will return to a gold standard within the next five years.

Kent Sorenson, a state senator in Iowa, asserted that “Right now we have a Federal Reserve printing money that’s not backed by anything — it’s just paper. Hess noted that Sorenson – who is supporting Michelle Bachmann in her presidential bid – has proposed a measure legalizing gold and silver coins as currency in Iowa.

The gold price retreated $19.48 to $1,621.18 per ounce Thursday as weakness in gold continued this morning. The spot price of gold fell to as low as $1,606.90 in overnight trading, but pared its losses as the U.S. dollar turned lower against a basket of foreign currencies. Silver prices fell as well, by $0.56, or 1.8%, to $30.69 per ounce. The gold price showed a muted reaction to the weekly U.S. jobless claims report, which at 403,000 met the median estimate among economists.