Whoa, folks. The bank system where "money is debt" is the problem, not corruption within it nor even feckless lending. A gold standard won't help if banks can still lend more than they have -and that's only possible because such loan-money counts as legal tender equivalent to gold. If I get paid $5000, $45,000 of that is people's mortgages and so on (no use to me), a few $k is various liquid assets (still no use to me) and a couple of $k might be redeemable against gold, silver or other goods if I shout loud enough. It's a good job not many people realize it at any one time or there'd be a run on the banks and a crash ten times worse than the last two years. Crooked and greedy people don't help things, but the system itself has grown up all wrong and needs to be reformed.