People often forget that new gold is being mined everyday.  The annual inflation rate of new gold found is only around 1-2 % but we shouldn't pretend that gold is deflationary.  

I believe America got off the gold standard when they realized they couldn't manipulate the economy unless they were detached from the gold standard.  Now they can type digital numbers into their computers at will and create as much currency as they wish.   The current economy runs off debt and without it everything would collapse.