Wait..... what's wrong with the Gold Standard? I thought getting off of it is what screwed up our economy in the first place?
The screwed-upedness of the economy forced us to abandon the gold standard.
The Federal Reserve had been printing money
and there was no increase in gold to back it up.
It's called "fractional reserve banking."
A Federal Reserve Note could be redeemed for 1/35 of an ounce of gold,
but there was only enough gold in Fort Knox to redeem about 1/10 of the gold.
So a run on the gold was getting started.
In 1971, Nixon abandoned the gold standard
to keep the U.S. government from running out of gold.
A few years later, Nixon (Kissinger) made an agreement with the Saudis
that the Saudis would regulate OPEC production such that
the price of petroleum, in U.S. dollars, would be kept fairly level.
So the U.S. dollar was effectively backed by petroleum, instead of gold.
That's what economists are referring to when they talk about "petrodollars."