ADVOCATES of the gold standard have long been dismissed by mainstream economists as a club of bow-tie-wearing crackpots. That is no longer quite fair. Joining the gold bugs' ranks is a group of individuals who almost certainly never wear dickie bows: so-called Islamic State. On August 29th, al-Hayat, the organisation's foreign-media arm, published a 55-minute video denouncing the fractional reserve banking system, and advocating “the return of the ultimate measure of wealth for the world”: gold.
