Trump’s Fed Nominee Stephen Moore Wants To Bring Back The Gold Standard

President Donald Trump‘s pick for the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Moore, backtracked on statements about his support for the gold standard after being confronted with multiple clips of him contradicting himself.

In an interview Thursday on CNN, host Erin Burnett asked about his previous statements regarding supporting a return to the gold standard — a financial system where the value of currency is based on gold — Moore denied he ever made such statements.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really said anything much about the gold [standard],” he insisted.
“I’m not in favor of gold standard.”

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Burnett then proceeded to play three video clips — one as recent as 2016 — in which Moore touted support for a return to the gold standard.

Moore was forced to acknowledge his previous statements. “I think that a gold standard will certainly be better than what we have right now,” he reasoned. “But I think there’s a much better system that we could put in place that could not just look at gold but all commodities.”

The U.S. currently has a monetary system not based on any commodity, as the federal government abandoned the gold standard decades ago following the Great Depression.

Instead, U.S. currency is, like almost every other paper money system in the world, a fiat system which is backed by the government.

The idea of reverting back to the gold standard captured Trump’s attention in the past as well.

“Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money,” Trump said back in 2016.