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Thanks to President's Trump's picks for prospective Fed Board nominees, the subject of gold price targeting (or a gold \"price rule\") is getting attention once again. The idea, which got a lot of attention back in the 1980s, after Arthur Laffer and other supply-siders, including Alan Reynolds, first began promoting it, is that the Fed could mimic a gold standard, keeping inflation in check and otherwise making the dollar \"sound,\" by employing open-market operations to stabilize the price of gold.1 The topic has come up again because three of Trump's prospective nominees have at one time or another suggested that the United States should revive the gold standard, and two of them, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore, are full-fledged supplysiders (see Benko 2019). Although Cain and Moore are no longer in the running, Judy Shelton, the third gold standard fan, is still in the race, along with Chris Waller of the St. Louis Fed (see Matthews and Torres 2019). Shelton also has strong supply-side leanings.These facts prompted Representative Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) to ask Jerome Powell, following his July 10, 2019, testimony, whether the United States should \"go back to the gold standard.\" In response, Powell, whether because he had a Laffer-style gold price rule in mind or for some other reason, interpreted the question as one asking whether the Fed should \"stabilize the dollar price of gold.\" That, he said, wouldn't be a good idea:There have been plenty of times in fairly recent history where the price of gold has sent signals that would be quite negative for either [maximum employment or stable prices]. . . . If you assigned us [to] stabilize the dollar price of gold, monetary policy could do that, but the other things would fluctuate, and we wouldn't care. We wouldn't care if unemployment went up or down. That wouldn't be our job anymore [Powell 2019].Powell's statement raises three questions. One is whether it's proper to equate reviving the gold standard with having the Fed target the price of gold, as Powell did. The second is whether Judy Shelton has herself endorsed a gold price rule. The third is whether such a rule would be as disastrous as Powell claims. This article is devoted to answering, or trying to answer, these questions.

On this edition of Meet the Press: Reports from the Iowa Caucus; an interview with Pat Buchanan; Steve Merrill discusses Bob Dole's campaign.

An alternative to the current US tax system would be a flat tax. According to its supporters, the flat tax would decrease the complexity of the tax system. Opponents contend that the flat tax will shift the tax burden to the middle class. The current research tested the claim that the flat tax will shift the tax burden to the middle class by developing simulations of two flat tax proposals, the Steve Forbes Plan and the Hall and Rabushka Plan, and then examining the change in the tax burden for different income levels as compared to the current tax system. The results show that both plans shift more of the tax burden to middle income class taxpayers than under the current US tax system.

On this edition of Meet the Press: Governors Christine Todd Whitman, Roy Romer, and John Engler; Richard Ben Cramer and E.J. Dionne discuss Bob Dole.

On this edition of Meet the Press: Trent Lott and Tom Daschle discuss balancing the budget; Phil Gramm and Lamar Alexander discuss their bid for the Republican presidential nominee; Bill Bradley discusses his new book and his retirement from the U.S. Senate.

On this edition of Meet the Press: John McCain discusses Cuba's shooting down of two unarmed U.S. planes; the Republican primaries with Mike Murphy.

On this edition of Meet the Press: Dick Armey and Leon Panetta discuss the budget and looming government shutdown; Alfonse D'Amato discusses Hillary Clinton and the Whitewater investigation; James Carville and Mary Matalin debate presidential politics.