http://www.todaysamericandream.com/Biblical%20Money.pdf

You might want to read this. It includes Biblical citations for its assertions.

I have read elsewhere where in antiquity gold and silver had traded 1-1. I also know that Sir Isaac Newton as head of Great Britain's Royal Mint in the early 1700s created the ratio of approximately 16-1 that held up for centuries. More recently the ratio has reached great extremes.