This week 45 years ago, August 15th 1971 to be exact, President Nixon suddenly declared the end of the Gold Standard. He ushered in the modern monetary system based on fiat paper and digital currency that works so poorly for us today and led to the global financial crisis.This was one of the most important events in modern financial, economic and monetary history and is a seminal moment in the creation of the global debt crisis which has confronted the U.S., Europe and the world in recent years and continues to this day.
Nixon ushered in an era of floating fiat currencies not backed by gold or silver but rather deriving value through government “fiat,” diktat or order of the government.
While Nixon justified the “technical” and “temporary” move as necessary to combat malign “international money speculators” who were “waging an all out war on the American dollar.” The real reason for the move was that the U.S. , then as today, was living way beyond its means with the Vietnam war and rapidly escalating military spending leading to large budget deficits and inflation
Governments internationally including the French and their President Charles de Gaulle were concerned about the debasement of the dollar and began to exchange their dollar reserves for gold bullion bars.
Nixon tried to reassure the American public about the “bugaboo of devaluation” and the value of their currency by declaring incorrectly and comically to us today:
“Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today… “
Subsequent to Nixon’s decision 45 years ago, the U.S. dollar fell very sharply. Gold surged in the coming 9 years and rose from $35/oz to $850/oz by January 1980. Since 1971, gold has fallen from 1/35th of an ounce of gold to 1/1350th of an ounce of gold today.