If the Gold standard came back ...

[tolbiny]

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My guess is the reason currency has increased in stability in the last thirty years is that the science of economics has improved rapidly and the data the Fed has to work with has improved over the last thirty years. The govt. and private sources spends tens of millions of dollars to generate economic data, which gives the Fed better information to make decisions.

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Comparing inflation rates between eras is, how shall we put this, extraordinarily difficult. A flood/weather system/drought in 1845 that wiped out 5% of crops in the US would be a much more severe shock than a similar event in 1945, or 1995. Globilization stabilizes prices by vastly increasing both producers and consumers to flatten out massive shocks, attributing this pattern to the fed, even as a cursory nod, is to ignore (or give them credit for) improvements in transportation, communication, production methods, prediction of weather, ect ect ect.