A Look Back at Nixon’s Infamous Monetary Decision
A half century ago one of the most disastrous monetary decisions in U.S. history was committed by Richard Nixon. In a television address, the president declared that the nation would no longer redeem internationally dollars for gold. Since the dollar was the world’s reserve currency, Nixon’s closing of the “Gold Window” put the world on an irredeemable paper monetary standard.
The ramifications of the act continue to this very day. America’s current financial mess, budget deficits, the reoccurring booms and busts, the decline of living standards (particularly the middle class), all have their genesis with Nixon’s infamous decision in August, 1971.
Abandoning the last vestiges of the gold standard was the culmination of a long-term goal of the banksters, politicians, financial elites, and deceitful economists. The first step was the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 whose primary purpose was to allow its member banks to inflate the money supply without fearing the consequences – bank failures/panics, bank runs, recessions/depressions. The Fed could, and still does, through the control of the money supply enrich itself, the government, and its aligned financial elites at the expense of the public at large.
The next step on the road to monetary debasement was Franklin Roosevelt’s draconian measure of outlawing the private ownership of gold. This was not only an unprecedented and outrageous attack on private property, but it also eliminated gold redemption of dollars domestically, which gave the Fed unlimited power to print money without fear of its notes being redeemed.
The specious justification for the law, enacted shortly after the start of FDR’s first tyrannical term in office, was to fight the Great Depression. Of course, the measure did nothing to mitigate the Depression which, in fact, was not caused by Americans’ ownership of gold, but rather the Fed itself and its wild inflationary policies throughout the “Roaring 20s.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
