mr. lehrman, you have done an excellent job, as have many others, of arguing that the if by yacht currency standard needs to be replaced with a hard anchor. could you elaborate what appears to be your preference for gold or any other single commodity which is bound to be less stable in value than, say, a basket? >> on the basket of commodities or basket of currencies or any kind of store-based monetary standard, i think it's sufficient for me to say that it would be as unstable as the fluctuating currencies themselves or the fluctuating commodities themselves. and there would be no reason to believe that the monetary standard would be stable based upon a fluctuateing basket of articles of wealth drawn from the market, the price of which must fluctuate based upon supply and demand, cost of production and those variations which are characterized both commodities and fluctuating foreign exchange rates untied to a gold standard as in the past. so i conclude that almost anything is possible if we rely on academics in classrooms to design a perfect monetary system. in the end whiteboards or blac