William Bramley/The Gods of Eden/21/219/1

Once the gold standard was created, paper notes were thought to be "as good as gold" because people could redeem the notes for actual gold. This created a false sense of security. As more and more gold notes entered the market, they gradually became worth less and less, resulting in a steady inflation. The gold owners/bankers had to keep issuing a constant stream of notes because that is how they earned their profits. As long as the bankers planned carefully and the people retained faith in the notes, the note writers could stay ahead of the inevitable inflation they created and make an enormous profit from it. If, on the other hand, they issued an overabundance and too many of their notes came back for redemption, they could, as a last resort, devalue the notes to save their gold. In this fashion, inflatable paper money, even under a gold standard, became a source of wealth and power to those entitled to create the money. It also generated indebtedness on an enormous scale because most of the "created-out-of-nothing" gold notes were released into the community as loans repayable to the bankers. If people did not borrow from the bankers, little new money would enter the market and the economy would slow down.