Making use of the national central banks’ gold reserves is much more transparent than the SMP, it is much more attractive for investors, much fairer, and would make it easier to get genuine consent amongst the euro area population and the European Parliament. Nor does it lead to unmanageable fiscal transfers from the North to the South with huge disincentive effects. It does not shift toxic debt instruments onto the ECB. And it does not cause sterilization problems or increase the difficulty of exiting unconventional monetary policy – the gold-backed bond solution avoids the path-dependence of the existing solutions.   Article