Most of the money we use today is:
a commodity money. backed 100% by gold and silver. partially backed by gold and silver. nothing more than bank debt.
The mercantilists were a group of writers and government policy makers who believed that:
commodity moneys should be replaced with debt moneys. a nation's wealth depended on the amount of gold it held. the gold standard was self-stabilizing if countries played by the rules of the game. using gold as money subjected a country to disturbances arising in foreign countries.
