The gold standard works until it doesn't. Then the only option is to bail from it. That's why no one is on it anymore. It's not a sufficiently flexible currency.
The "issue" with gold standard is that you cannot compete with countries that can print money at will, which gives them the advantage NOW, even though they'll suffer massive inflation later down the line. How will you ever win a war when your enemy has infinite money? I guess people forgot what happened to Germany's economy after WWI. Your only hope is to be the one that wins the war, and gets all the booty and reparations.
Fiat economics is basically an infinite money glitch, indirectly paid by your very own tax-payers 30 years down the line. Of course no government wants to get rid of it. All I hear is the same Keynesian party line that keeps being parroted by modern economists and taxpayers alike.
What do you mean? From a quick search, they had to pay in reparations:
* for WW1, $12.5 BILLION
* for WW2, $413 million
Even Allies figured out that the ridiculous demands of WW1, with the double whammy of 1929, were a direct cause of hyperinflation in Germany trying to pay for it (which already had borrowed incredible amounts of money as they were the first country to abandon the gold standard to finance the Great War) and the second time around they allowed the country to have a chance to actually rebuild itself.
