“Will Jared Loughner discredit the gold standard?” That is the question being asked, apparently in all seriousness, by the Reuters news wire in the wake of the reports that one of the killer’s obsessions turns out to have been our fiat money. “Loughner’s YouTube videos,” Reuters reports, “are consumed with the idea of creating a ‘new currency,’ one that is nothing like our current, Federal Reserve-controlled greenback.” The way the New York Times put it, in a profile of Mr. Loughner, is that the killer was obsessed with “certain grandiose tenets of a number of extremist right-wing groups — including the need for a new money system . . .”

Which “extremist right-wing groups” the Times was referring to the paper didn’t deign to say. But, hey, the United Nations has been carrying on about the need for a new world currency. And as the Gray Lady was moving its profile of Mr. Loughner, the Wall Street Journal was moving an interview with the Communist Chinese strongman, Hu Jintao, who, on the eve of his visit to America, is questioning the dollar. He is, as the Journal put it, “calling the present U.S. dollar-dominated currency system a ‘product of the past,’” and highlighting what the Journal called “moves to turn the yuan into a global currency.” Get set for a column from Paul Krugman saying that if Sarah Palin wasn’t responsible for Mr. Loughner’s rampage then Ben Bernanke was.

Wisecracks aside, America is hurtling toward a serious moment in respect of its dollar, and we predict that the gold standard will look less and less crazy with every passing week. In his answers to questions posed by the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese communist party boss offered no ground on exchange rates, making it clear that China has its own internal pressures and rebuffing the condescending lecture he got last week from Secretary Geithner about how a stronger yuan is in China’s own best interests. Hard to credit, no doubt, from a treasury secretary with a checkered record here at home. The fact is that in a world where the big powers are arguing over whether the yuan is too strong or the dollar too weak, only the gold standard offers a modern and scientific way to discern the difference. For only gold can tell us what is actually happening, whether the yuan is gaining in value and the dollar losing, or both are losing, or both gaining, just one faster than the other. And it will take more than the ravings of a Jared Loughner to discredit that enduring principle.