With the Gold Standard, the US economy would print currency that equaled a specific value of gold. Meaning, you could cash in your money for a specified amount of gold because a unit of currency = a specific amount of gold.

The limitations to Governments was that they could not spend what they wanted because the amount of currency in circulation had to correspond to the amount of gold in reserve. Nixon, eliminated the Gold Standard, I think during the Vietnam war. As a result, the currency in circulation today does not have to be backed up by anything, not gold, not anything. That's why we see trillion dollar deficits today. Politicians can spend what they want regardless of the real economic downfalls that eventually have to be dealt with. Nowadays, on a side note, our US debt is fianced by foreign governments such as the Chinese and others.
This means most of debt the US government owns is owed to foreign investers.

The answer to whether having Gold Standard is good or not......

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Title: Gold Standard
Approximate Word Count: 4645
Approximate Pages: 19 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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