Tricky Dick Nixon at Work

August 15, 1971: A Date Which Has Lived In Infamy (forbes.com)

This article was written 10 years ago on Sunday and is even more relevant today. On August 15th 1971 US President Richard Nixon took the US off the last remnants of the pre World War I international gold standard. The main reason for this, in a nutshell, was America had used deficit spending to fund the Vietnam War and other countries that were prepared to hold US dollars were cashing in these dollars for gold since the US dollar had become overvalued against gold. This resulted in gold reserves in the US treasury being depleted so Tricky Dick simply suspended redemption rights. This one decision ushered in the current debt based fiat monetary system.