Newt Gingrich Backs Gold Standard, Joins Ron Paul

Former House Speaker and current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Wednesday the United States should consider returning to the gold standard.

Ginrgrich, speaking at a foreign policy forum in South Carolina, said he advocated a commission on gold to look at the whole concept of how we get back to hard money, CNN reported.

Comments on Federal Reserve Role

Gingrich also argued that the U.S. Federal Reserve's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment should be abandoned.

We need to repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, Gingrich said, The Weekly Standard reported Wednesday. We need to say to the Federal Reserve: your only job is to maintain the stability of the dollar because we want a dollar to be worth 30 years from now what it is worth now because that optimizes saving and investment because people know what they are going to back.

Humphrey-Hawkins is a 1978 full employment law that has in fact expired, but the Fed chairman still reports to Congress on the effects of his policies on employment.

Gingrich joins fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, a longstanding advocate of returning to the gold standard, in support of a monetary system based on the precious metal.