Ask an Economist

Beginning of article

David Andolfatto is an economist and vice president in the Research division. He joined the St. Louis Fed in 2009 after teaching economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and at other universities in Canada. He has been a visiting scholar in such varied places as Tehran, Budapest, Tokyo, Bogota and Cleveland. His areas of interest at work include macroeconomics, labor markets and monetary theory. In his spare time, he punishes his body with Insanity workouts and soccer scrimmages. For more on his work, see http://research. stlouisfed.org/econ/andolfatto/

Q. Why doesn't the U.S. return to the gold standard so that the Fed can't "create money out of thin air"?

A. The …