If by "very good arguments" you mean "the same arguments that come up every time this is discussed", then sure.
The basic idea was that giving countries the ability to mint their own currency to pay off debts would create uncontrollable inflation, which in turn would discourage the extension of credit and, by extension, investment.
Note what he did here.
Investment is an extension of credit.
The idea that investors might actually save actual physical actual wealth and use that actual physical money to actually give actual money to someone is an alien concept to Keyesians at this point.
Investment isn't possible unless you wave a magic wand and create money out of thin air.
They've been saying this for over two years now, and it has been wrong every time.
But as an infamous man once said, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
The diagnosis of the problem is at least somewhat sound, but gold is NOT the solution. The argument for the gold standard is that, because gold is a tangible commodity, governments can't print it. Which is true. But if you make gold freely exchangeable for currency (which is the implication of the gold standard), the result is an international tug of war to accumulate gold reserves, which greatly distorts the market. Ahamed's book does a great job explaining that dynamic.
And it's important to put out there in these cases that
we are not gold bugs. Some of us are, sure. But if you're not, put that on the table as soon as possible.
If you introduce the idea that anything can be money, it destroys further parts of his argument.
Note that he said "make gold freely exchangeable for currency". Again, underhanded. Why is it that gold is not free for us to use
as currency?
What is it about gold that makes it impossible for us to transact in it?
The only thing that makes this impossible is the fact that Keynesians have repeated that lie often enough.
That, and the fact that if we were to do that, government couldn't shave our money, meaning they wouldn't have enough money, meaning they would have to stop "services", like shaving our money.
Ultimately, academics on the left and the right roundly rejected gold.
I think he really means to say "academics on the left and the right whom we allow to grace the pages of expensive economics texts roundly reject gold".
Conservatives moved toward Milton Friedman's idea of a constant, predictably expanding supply of monetary base (money), while liberals prefer discretionary monetary policy by an independent central bank to conduct countercyclical monetary policy (expand credit during downturns, restrict it during booms). The two positions, however, aren't really all that far apart (strict monetarism failed when it was tried, and the only real difference between Friedmanites and New Keynesians over what should have been done in response to the recent downturn is one of degree-- Friedman would have prescribed aggressive, unconventional monetary policy from the Fed (QE3 and QE4), while New Keynesians would see large doses of fiscal stimulus (roughly 3-4 times the size of the one that actually passed) to combat the problem.
Little known fact: Milton Friedman's son David Friedman is a past economics professor and a great proponent of anarchocapitalism. He's also a polymath the likes of which his father never was (I was reading articles by David Friedman on medieval Turkish recipes before I even knew anarchocapitalism existed). So given that the apple has fallen pretty far from that tree, I don't see why Milton's arguments ought to carry so much weight.
Of course, I understand precisely why they do: it's because he can be propped up as a "conservative" who supports the things Keynesians push for.
I think the gold bug argument comes out of irrational fears of inflation-- they see it everywhere, and think that any inflation is the worst thing ever.
Yeah, when someone grabs your junk on a crowded train, it's not the same thing as when a rapist gives you AIDS, sure.
Where really, too much inflation is disastrous, while a low, steady rate of inflation (2-5% annually) is very much a good thing in a functioning economy (it encourages extension of credit and discourages hoarding of cash). And, as Paul Volcker's work in the early 1980's shows, an independent central bank is capable of making unpopular decisions to fight inflation, even if it means significant short-term suffering. But that's far from the problem now-- core inflation is well below target, and wage growth is actually falling, so fears of inflation are completely wrongheaded right now. But gold bugs tend not to be persuaded by models or evidence. What they do isn't economics-- it's more of a religion.
Wow, that's so much smoke blown up our asses that it's coming out of our ears.
This guy hasn't had to buy milk recently, I guess.
Or butter.
Or gasoline.
Or copper plumbing.
Or tires.
Look, I'm just not that old, and if I realize that certain things are twice or three times more expensive than they were ten years ago, and if I can draw a direct link between these things and some commodity, this just isn't that hard to follow.
Some things go up in price because the commodity they rely on went up, and other things don't go up in price so quickly because they're either farther down the manufacturing line, or because natural market forces - which tend to push prices down - are counteracting the inflation of the money supply.
I don't see how this is so hard to grasp.
ETA: Had to put this in here....
In 1996, I was earning $7 an hour, and in order to fill up my mom's 1994 Saturn SL1 gas tank, I had to work for about two hours.
Today, my total compensation is about $50 an hour, and in order to fill up my 1991 Saturn SL1 gas tank, I have to work for about two hours.
