Belief In Gold A Global Phenomenon

This opinion piece webbed by a Phillipines paper has John Mangun predicting "The end of funny money." By that term, he means fiat currency. Unlike many other fiat-currency bashers, he says that the United States was taken advantage of in the 1960s by other countries inflating while tied to the Bretton Woods system. He also notes that the U.S.' newfound status as a debtor nation makes it unable to revive a Bretton Woods arrangement.

Massive printing of money, dollars, combined with massive debt has destroyed the ability of the US dollar to be the foundation of all world currencies. Bernanke and the Obama administration have destroyed the dollar. And when the dollar finally takes its last gasp—dying as the world’s reserve currency—all other paper money will fail also. The end of funny money.

Nations will be forced to back their currencies with something of intrinsic value. All paper money must ultimately be backed with something of value. For the last 30 years, that backing, that value, has been provided by the dollar. The US dollar will not back global currencies again. For nearly 2,000 years a reliable substitute for carrying gold or silver has been in place. Then came 1971.

The 30-year experiment using valueless currency based on trusting the governments, particularly the US government, is a total failure and is coming to an end.

There's another fellow pushing for gold to be used as money, only he's on the implementation side - and his inspiration isn't monetary economics, it's the Koran. Indonesian Sheikh Abdalqadir as-Sufi is pushing the idea that gold and silver dinars are the only currency worth using, and his followers are complying in part because they distrust the Indonesian rupiah:

Hoping to follow the example of Mohammad and the first generations of Muslims, the sheikh’s followers do their shopping with dirhams worth around 30 000 rupiah (3.20 [rand]) and dinars worth 1.43million (153).

And they want the government – or preferably a worldwide Islamic caliphate – to replace paper currencies with the dinar that was used, in the words of the sheikh, “until the incursions of the kafir financiers in the Muslim lands”....

The number of dinars on the local market more than doubled in 2009 to 25 000 pieces, reflecting the movement’s growing popularity, he said.

“We decided to mint silver and gold coins in Indonesia following a fatwa issued by Sheikh Abdalqadir as-Sufi in Cape Town, banning Muslims from using paper money,” Azis said.

That's how the movement grows. As is often the case, religious and other belief-centered reasons are used to effect a change in habits. Kierkeggard's "leap of faith" does make its presence felt in ostensibly humdrum and calculative economic matters.