Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #683

Text 1 Advocates of the nineteenth-century gold standard argued that tying a nation’s currency to a physical commodity prevented reckless government spending and hyperinflation. By anchoring the economy to an immutable standard of value, politicians were stripped of their ability to artificially inflate the money supply to fund short-term political projects, thereby ensuring long-term economic stability. Text 2 The immutable nature of the gold standard made economies catastrophically rigid. Because the money supply was tied to physical gold reserves, central banks were utterly unable to inject liquidity into the market during severe financial crises. This inability to respond to credit contractions with necessary monetary expansion frequently turned manageable recessions into devastating, prolonged depressions. Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the assertion in Text 1 about preventing “reckless government spending”?