3 ms·
What happened was Nixon devauled the US Dollar, before it ws pegged to $35 per oz Gold and the US had to pay debts in Gold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon
by jmclnx 6y ago
What happened was Nixon devauled the US Dollar, before it ws pegged to $35 per oz Gold and the US had to pay debts in Gold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
- api 6y agoTo be fair, his hand was kind of forced. Other countries were already abandoning Bretton Woods, considering it unfair as it gave the US a disproportionate amount of power to manipulate its currency. It's similar to the currency value struggles that have been a major fault line in the EU.
- djur 6y agoThe Nixon Shock was the culmination of several years of gradual collapse of the post-war economic system (including Bretton Woods). If you look carefully at the graphs on that page, a lot of them were trending upwards before 1971.