The press loves to focus on the wildest ideas that emanate from the lips of presidential candidate Ron Paul. 

I am not here to make a case for his presidential aspirations.  However, he makes a solid point when he advocates for a return to the gold standard.

Thanks to the machinations of Richard Nixon in August of 1971, abetted by a "wet behind the ears" Treasury Secretary John Connally, the U.S. stopped the backing of our dollar by gold and, for good measure, threw in wage and price controls.

I was flying for the old Pan American Airlines at the time and missed the entire gold discussion because I was completely and utterly focused on the fact that I would be working without any raises for as long as the wage controls lasted. 

I have regretted that lack of attention ever since!

Why did President Nixon permit the termination of The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 which allowed the "closing of the gold window?"

The answer is simple.  In 1971 the price for an ounce of gold was only $35 and foreign nations were able to exchange U.S. dollars for U.S. gold on demand.

The world-wide stock markets had recently panicked about an economic slowdown and Great Britain then tried to redeem $3 billion for an equal amount in gold.

Our gold supplies at that time would have been seriously depleted if we had complied with Britain's request. 

So, the U.S. gold window was closed.

That "closing of the gold window" allowed the U.S. dollar to float against the value of other world currencies, protecting our small amount of gold reserves, while depreciating the value of the dollar.

Since that event occurred, the purchasing power of that 1971 dollar has withered to 18 cents of purchasing power today!  

Following the Nixon administration's not-so-brilliant idea, we saw 10 years of the worst inflation in our history, as well as the most stagnant economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Is it any wonder that our economy is again "swimming upstream" against the tides of a possible double-dip recession?

With no gold to back the dollar, Bernanke and the Fed keep printing paper, helping to inflate consumer prices and further debase the value of our money.

John Maynard Keyes, with whom the current administration seems inordinately enthralled, wrote in "The Economic Consequences of Peace," that "Lenin was certainly right.  There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency."

What a pity that it appears no one on the Obama economic team seems to remember reading this one potent sentence from Keynes.

If we want to again return the U.S. to prosperity, grow jobs and provide our children with the opportunity to live better than we have, then we need to seriously contemplate returning the dollar to the gold standard.

To right the ills of our current economic malaise, we should begin to listen to, at least, this one idea from the candidate the press loves to poke fun at... Senator Ron Paul.