We used to have depressions every 5 years with the gold standards and according to some economic historians, the international gold standard, pushed us to two world wars.
Now, this does not mean I don’t understand the systemic risk with how money/banking works now. In fact, we are in the midst of one now – a systemic crisis. But, IMO, it goes deeper than replacing fiat with gold.
Also, enough with the misplaced demonization of dead money market theorists. This isn’t “keynesian” economics, it’s economics to keep the whole shebang from collapsing. I guarantee Bernanke is not referring to Keynes literature to make decisions. They are not sitting back there with some Keynes manual for monetary policy. They are treating it like a system and throwing money at where the system is seizing up. That’s it.