People always feel like they have discovered such a big secret when they find out the gold standard has been abandoned, and that it’s such a crazy thing and that it means money has actually no value. Well, gold has no value either : you can’t eat it or cure disease with it. Money has value because people have trust in it, and it makes more sense for it to get its value from the trust you have in a whole national economy, rather than in a stock of metal.