this happened because the US had been printing more dollars that it had gold to back up, to fund covert actions in vietnam (and other places). France figured this out, and sent battleships to New York harbor, and took physical possession of gold for its dollars. To prevent other countries from doing this, we closed the gold window, and went off the gold standard.
⚡️🚨 WATCH - 54 years ago today, President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold.
It was probably one of the most important decisions of the last century, the effects of which are still being felt today.
There's only one answer: Bitcoin.
https://blossom.primal.net/e2f972a79691fee19e397b03359dc04375be019898459074f6043d595e2ca3cd.mov
Discussion
oh! I thought it was that France announced that it was going to
In any case, Nixon was in kind of an impossible situation. We tend to blame this stage on him, but suspending the convertibility was kind of the natural next step given the gold to dollars ratio by then.
It still boggles my mind that we already had years (decades?) where American citizens couldn't convert *their* dollars for gold, but foreign governments could. It seems like either it's convertible or it's not; either you have that gold or you don't.
not widely known. i heard it in Corbett episode. now i cant remember which one 😬
i was actually thinking this morning, listening to the last Tucker interview with the gold window in mind, that….
something like this…
The Kennedy assassination was the coup. A seed. The Bush/Obama era was that seed producing fruit.
I just dug a foundation trench by hand, in tree root ground.
Its hard to remove roots.
very hard to remove roots! I like digging, but it's heavy work and I've only had to contend with small sumac roots.
Yes, makes sense about seed/fruit. Not sure how that metaphor continues - that it was an invasive that's taken over everything? At first, a relatively clean (I mean, bloody and horrible, but well-packaged) fruit and now moving us toward chaos?
33-71 so yeah decades
Nixon could have devalued the dollar to line up gold holdings & dollar debt (and opened redemption up to the American people)
He chose to go in the opposite direction