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fine, then make laws. make it the 'prime directive' for the central bank to keep the inflation rate low and make sure that as long as it isn't they don't even try to boost economical growth with their monetary policy. We did that with the ECB, for me thats enough to trust in our currency.

and look around, so far Greenspan has acted in the interest of your country. you do have relatively strong economical growth, low interest rates and a low inflation, what more do you want?
(i do realize that there probably is a bubble somewhere in between all that, but there hardly is anything a central bank can do about it.)

now look what you would have with a gold standard: with the fixed exchange rates like in the old gold standard the world couldn't handle all the flows of international investments. it would simply not be possible without some flexibility in the exchange rates.

so now you will say 'then lets just fix the dollar to gold, who cares about the rest of the world anyway?'. in that case look back to the late 90s, when everyone was buying dollars like crazy, the dollar would have become even stronger, meaning that even more jobs would have been outsourced to Asia.

i even doubt that a strong economical growth is possible with a gold standard. look at this: you have economical growth, meaning there are more goods available. you have the same amount of money in circulation but more goods, that means falling prices. if prices fall in an economy, why should i invest? its not worth it. i probably would even stop buying goods for consumption, because i would probably get them cheaper if only i wait a little.

I agree that it has been a magnificent half century for the American consumer. Our nation was clearly blessed. That usually happens to the victor of a very destructive war on someone else's turf. Our currency became the world's currency, and it was in the interest of world stability to keep our currency strong - irregardless of how much of it was available. Things have now changed. It may no longer be in the interest of others to keep our currency strong - especially if an excess supply of it dilutes their previous dollar investments. In fact, our competitors and enemies may see advantages in unwinding their dollar investments. If this happens, we are in a whole new ball game. I think the long run implication of our monetary policy is yet to play out.