Citizen's Briefing Book

The Citizen's Briefing Book is a section of Change.gov, an online website that the Obama administration will maintain.  The Citizen's Briefing Book attempts to give the masses the power to share ideas with the president.  The website allows anyone to sign up to suggest ideas and issues and rank the ideas of others.  As expected, many of the issues include the usual "stupidity in masses" mentality seen frequently online.  However, there are a few gems hidden among the trash.

Most of the ideas in The Citizen's Briefing Book are fairly fiscally wasteful and some are very socially conservative as well.  I hope that the general public will hear about the website soon, allowing for possibility of diversifying the idea spectrum.  I encourage everyone to sign up for the Citizen's Briefing Book and vote up or add issues that matter, but please do not vote on issues when you are not well-informed.

Gold Standard vs. Fiat Money

Data Gathered here and here . Although it's not possible (or maybe it is, ask an economist!) to predict what gold prices would've been like if we were on the gold standard (maybe they would've been more stable), it bears to keep in mind that the U.S. is not the only country in the world, and other countries do use fiat money. Although the overall trend is for the gold to stay roughly the same price, it often moves unpredictably. The CPI (which is basically a measure of inflation, if you're in a year where CPI is 200, your money is half as valuable as in the year where it is 100), on the other hand, has a predictable movement. Something that is predictable is the next best thing to something being constant. Anyways, this chart is why, in my opinion, it is not at all useful, and probably even dangerous to go back to the gold standard.