Commerzbank’s Carsten Fritsch uses Alan Greenspan’s death to revisit his long-standing support for Gold as a premier currency. The bank notes Greenspan’s consistent scepticism toward fiat money, the abolition of the Gold standard, and links his remarks to the sharp rise in Gold prices in recent years and supportive survey evidence from central banks compiled by the World Gold Council.

Monetary doubts underpin long term appeal

"Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan died yesterday at the age of 100. As chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee from 1987 to 2006, Greenspan shaped the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve."

"Under his leadership, the Fed began lowering interest rates and expanding liquidity during crises, which calmed the markets in the short term but was not without negative side effects in the medium to long term. Less well known to many is his view on gold. Greenspan was considered a supporter of the gold standard long before his time at the Fed."

"A quote from the 1966 essay “Gold and Economic Freedom” has become legendary: “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. "There is no safe store of value.” He held fast to this view even after leaving the Fed. In 2014, he said: “Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.” "

"The gold standard has been abolished since 1971 at the latest, when US President Nixon ended the US dollar’s peg to gold. Greenspan’s remarks, however, speak for themselves. The sharp rise in the price of gold in recent years attests to this, as does the survey of central banks’ views on gold recently published by the World Gold Council."

(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor.)