My reading of history points to a bit of both.
FDR with the gold confiscation and dollar devaluation was premeditated.
For the 1940s, that was more haphazard. Inflation broke out from war-related money printing, and the Treasury basically forced the Fed to keep yields low to finance the war, which combined with the gold ban and capital controls, inflated away large swaths of debt.
The gold ban ensures that people's savings can be controlled, and now people have more ways to store their wealth in gold, other countries' currencies and assets, Bitcoin and cryptoassets. With political rivalries and divided public opinion, geopolitics and the collapse of petrodollars, the crisis will be difficult to deal with. The choice is either a truce between great powers or a financial crisis.
