[stephen_g]

That's definitely in spite of being on the gold standard. Have a look at the history of financial crises in the US [1]. In the time period you mentioned, there were 21 recessions, five 'panics' and three depressions.

If you look at the CPI history, it was largely deflationary (which is good if you do like recessions and depressions), but also times where inflation reached 27% [2]. The gold standard can't stop price inflation, and when inflation takes off it makes currency pegs impossible to hold, which is why pretty much every commodity convertible currency has eventually failed.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit... 2. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/community/financial-and-econo...

[WalterBright]

A gold standard does not imply currency pegs. I think we can all agree that pegs never work.

As for the panics etc. in the 19th century, yes they happened, and were usually the result of government monkey business with the economy. Note that with fiat money we've still had panics, depressions, and recessions, including the Mother Of All Depressions.

The last one was just 10 years ago.

> The gold standard can't stop price inflation

If it doesn't, then you don't actually have a gold standard. You have pegging a currency to gold, which is something quite different.