Some time ago, I mentioned Jeffrey's Bell's emergence as GOP Senate candidate in New Jersey, expressing approval of his credentials as policy wonk but wariness of his apparent intention to advocate a gold standard and make it the centerpiece of his campaign.
He has indeed done so, as evidenced by this WSJ piece, "Jeff Bell Takes on Cory Booker and the Fed." If we were living in a time of high and rising inflation, such as the 1970s, I could understand the focus on extremely tight money and how to impose a straitjacket that could keep policy tight. Given that this bears no resemblance to the current situation, I can only see it as an example of a time warp in the thinking of some conservatives and free-market types. However, I take issue with Cory Booker's riposte that Bell "wants to take us back to the '70s," when as the same article points out the last vestige of the gold standard was abandoned in 1971.
