Actually, Amos is right... Gold is no more valuable than anything else... Why not sharks teeth or bird nests??? I mean, when you have to have yer currency backed with something someone has to come up with the "standard" by which currencies are valued... That standard is always going to be arbitrary... Okay, it may be temporarily valuable at best...

There is a concept called "paradox of value"... I mean, take a glass of water and put it next to a glass of gold... To most folks the glass of gold has greater value... Now take those two same glasses out to the desert where a man has been lost and not had anything to drink for three days and ask him which one is more valuable...

So, yeah, something might seem like the perfect "standard" but then circumstances can change and it is not longer that perfect standard folks thought it to be...

I other words, it's rather silly to have currency backed by anything... All it does is set up one's currency to fail if the standard becomes more, or less, valuable in the eyes of the folks who elevated it to standard status...

We, as Earthlings, have progressed a little further down the road than that primitive kinda thinking...

B~

p.s. I do understand that there are folks out there who disagree, regardless of logic, and want standards... Doesn't change anything...