Why 'Stable Money' Means Gold
"As I see it, there are only three kinds of criteria for controlling the stock of money."One is the kind of automatic criterion that is provided by a commodity standard, a gold standard in which we do not have discretionary management of the system but in which the amount of money in the system is determined entirely by external affairs. I think such a system is neither desirable nor feasible in the United States today. … [W]e are not willing at home to obey its discipline; we are not willing to subordinate domestic stability to the necessities of the external balance of payments."I should qualify this last statement. Nobody will say he is willing to sacrifice domestic stability to the balance of payments, yet our present policy is one in which we are doing it."