Jem, Jem, Jem, get a grip man. I can't believe I'm reading that from you. You of all people. You know we can't go back to the gold standard because we can't control the price of gold anymore. That's why we were forced off the standard in the first place. When the Treasury was selling gold at $35, elsewhere it was selling for $40-45. Doesn't take rocket science to figure out what you would do if you could buy gold at $35 and sell it at $45. That's why Tricky Dick shocked us all. For those who like gold we still have a gold standard in a sense. You can convert your dollars to gold at the prevailing price!, then barter for a pineapple using your gold to pay the merchant. Wouldn't that be convenient! Ben Carson wants to use a basket of commodities as a currency standard, bless his naive childish heart. Same problem there. Fiat currency is what makes sense today. Money is worth what you can buy is worth to you.
If you google, "Is QE printing?," or something like that, you will find articles by people that understand QE. Printing is what Germany did after WWI, and what Zimbabwe did.
What the U.S. did is create new money in a reversible process by borrowing at exceedingly low real interest rates. Don't forget that when the Fed is the buyer of new bonds on the secondary market, any interest paid on those bonds comes back to the Treasury minus the operating cost of the Fed. QE is a reversible process. When the Fed sells bonds on the secondary market, money comes back out of the economy and they can figuratively flush it down the toilet. You are in good hands with Ben an Janet, they should start an ice cream company. One of th flavor could be called 'QE' and it would be the color of money.
Yes the middle class is being wrecked, but it isn't the Fed that is destroying the middle class. Read Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the 21st Century" when you get some spare time.
