Gold has been money for most of recorded human history. Industrial capitalism operated on a global gold standard up until the world wars shredded Europe’s economy. In 1933, President Roosevelt criminalized private gold ownership using an executive order, and the U.S. government forced citizens to sell their gold at a below-market valuation. This gold was melted down into bricks and shipped to Fort Knox where KPMG says it still sits to this day.
The Bretton Woods Agreement was executed in 1944, which pegged the U.S. dollar to gold at $35 per ounce, and installed the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Under Bretton Woods, all other national currencies were pegged to the dollar, and foreign central banks could exchange dollars for gold at the fixed rate.
The Bretton Woods Agreement required the U.S. government to maintain the dollar-to-gold exchange ratio, but that didn’t happen. The U.S. government instead ramped up the printing presses to power its “Guns and Butter” campaigns in the fifties and sixties. Eventually foreign central banks caught on and began to exchange their dollar reserves for gold through the gold window. Gold steadily flowed out of the U.S. Treasury until August 15, 1971 when President Nixon unilaterally closed the gold window and ended the U.S. dollar’s direct convertibility to gold.
This action thrust the entire world onto a fiat monetary standard where all currencies floated in value against one another. The word “fiat” is defined as: an arbitrary order or decree, and the word very literally means “let it be done” in Latin. Fiat money is simply money that comes into existence and derives its value exclusively from government decree.
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