How is comparing Greece's run-up of its public debt using a fiat currency, the Euro, "effectively the same as being on gold"? Fiat currencies are fundamentally detached from hard, physical assets, and that's the way central bankers want them to be.
So first, if you imagine that a gold standard would prevent runaway government borrowing, you might want to notice that Greece -- which is the right's poster child for runaway public borrowing – ran up its debt while on the euro, effectively the same as being on gold 3/