Gold standard and reserve currency are not the same thing, gold was not liquid enough, so they pegged currencies to gold, but those currencies were the reserve, not based on choice, based on spending on importation, British Sterling flooded the markets when the Brtiish were the worlds largest net importer, to feed their industrial revolution, the dollar supplanted Sterling as the Americans began to import more than the entire British Empire.GrumpyCatFace wrote:Under the gold standard, GOLD is the reserve. That's why it's a gold standard.Smitty-48 wrote:It's not going to be gold neither, gold is not liquid enough, you could peg a currency to gold, but gold itself would not be the reserve currency, it wasn't the reserve currency even when there was a gold standard, the reserve currency, under the gold standard, was British Sterling, which then handed off to the dollar as America began to outspend the British Empire.GrumpyCatFace wrote:
No, it won't be Chinese Yuan. It will be gold. And it will stay gold, until another superpower arises to take the 'stability throne'.
British Sterling was pegged to silver, which is why it was called STERLING. SILVER was the reserve.
Again, you don't know what you're talking about, neither in terms of the gold standard, nor the reserve currency.
Sterling was the reserve currency, even when there was a gold standard, because Sterling was flooding the markets by importation. The British had gold reserves, but they didn't pay in gold, because they didn't have to. The British Empire was so expansive and voracious, you had to take their Sterling, by default.