{"id":110,"date":"2009-09-01T22:57:02","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T02:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/?p=110"},"modified":"2009-09-01T23:02:06","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T03:02:06","slug":"when-the-us-left-the-gold-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/?p=110","title":{"rendered":"When the US Left the Gold Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/7\/71\/Nixon_30-0316a.jpg\/150px-Nixon_30-0316a.jpg\" alt=\"Nixon\" align=\"left\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nixon_Shock\" target=\"_blank\">The Nixon Shock<\/a> was a fascinating period in American economic history. Basically, the USG had way overspent on its budget and the rest of the world was suspicious about the value of the US dollar relative to its gold reserves. When France called us on it and demanded gold in payment for goods and services, Nixon decided &#8211; unilaterally &#8211; to take the US off the gold standard.<\/p>\n<p>He didn&#8217;t do it in consultation with anyone else. He just did it. It caught the Congress, banking community, and the world by surprise. Since then, the dollar has gone through severe inflation and the price of gold has gone significantly upward from $35 per ounce.<\/p>\n<p>There is some speculation about the US possibly returning to a gold or bimetallic standard. If it did, it could do so with a stroke of the president&#8217;s pen. However, given the massive deficits we have here, that would not be a good idea: lenders might demand payment in the form of precious metals, and we&#8217;d be right back where Nixon was in &#8217;71&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nixon Shock was a fascinating period in American economic history. Basically, the USG had way overspent on its budget and the rest of the world was suspicious about the value of the US dollar relative to its gold reserves. When France called us on it and demanded gold in payment for goods and services, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-us-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zzzptm.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}