Donald Trump could restore a grand old tradition. Liberals would hate it, but it would bring even more prosperity to America.

Ralph Benko, who worked for Ronald Reagan, just made a fascinating case for how President Trump can get the economy growing even faster than it is already.

Our GDP growth is currently at 4.1{75726800c12fe2ebed14402fd98444a61f7eda42751f92330bc58faf20bd8821}, a number not seen in 17 years.

Benko argues that the last great economic growth occurred because the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy tried to “follow signals that a gold standard would have created.”

Currently, the U.S. dollar is the global currency, and it is used to price most international trade. But the dollar is no longer backed by gold, making the entire monetary system unstable. The Federal Reserve can print as much money as it likes, which has led to inflation and general uncertainty about the dollar’s viability.

But former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan didn’t overprint money during the last period of economic growth, known as The Great Moderation. Greenspan said that he viewed gold as “the primary global currency,” as opposed to the U.S. dollar.

Benko believes this strategy led to, “one of the most equitably prosperous periods in modern American history.”  Over 20 million jobs were created during The Great Moderation, but the Federal Reserve ultimately decided to abandon the plan, causing job stagnation under George W. Bush and Obama.

President Trump has praised the gold standard in the past, even hinting that he would like to adopt a modernized international gold standard. In 2016, Trump stated, “We used to have a very, very solid country because it was based on a gold standard.”

Benko believes Trump could reinstate the gold standard and gives him a blueprint for how to do it.

From Forbes:

What would be the outcome of Trump’s following his instincts and going for the gold?

Prosperity, that’s what.

As Paul-Martin Foss of the Menger Center astutely points out, the Federal Reserve Board currently has three vacancies. If Trump were to fill those vacancies with three sophisticated gold standard advocates, the president would create a super “beachhead team” at the Fed to seriously restore equitable prosperity.

These appointments would be the safe and sure first steps out of economic stagnation for America. Couple these with a White House “Team B” to plan the enactment of the Jack Kemp Gold Standard Act and removal of the regulatory and tax barriers to using gold as currency. Then watch an American economic miracle take place.

Trump has already caused the economy to go from a whimper to a roar during his presidency without adopting the gold standard, but this move would truly put him over the top. Such an achievement would forever cement him in American history as a true visionary, as someone willing to take a leap that other presidents were too afraid to make.

Benko argues that the United States has the means to do it because we have the gold. “[T]he United States, Germany, and the IMF together have about as much gold as the rest of the world combined and America has well more than Germany and the IMF combined,” he wrote.

Benko concludes by calling on the president to make this move, which will lead to upward income mobility for workers. “President Trump: replace the dollar with gold as the global currency to make America great again.”

Source: Forbes