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The more I hear about this Nixon feller the less I like him. Seems like a real scoundrel.
by franktankbank 1y ago
The more I hear about this Nixon feller the less I like him. Seems like a real scoundrel.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoDumping the gold standard was one of the best moves nixon made. The gold standard was directly responsible for untold economic suffering in the country.
- franktankbank 1y ago[flagged]
- HDThoreaun 1y agoSecond worst economic period in US history directly caused by the lack of fiat currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression Worst economic period in US history directly caused by the lack of fiat currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression Fiat currency is just below electricity and insulin as the greatest inventions of the recent centuries.
- hunglee2 1y agohe may have had no choice - there are inherent contradictions in every monetary system - there is a reason they all collapse in the end.
- triceratops 1y agoFruit vendor: You like these apples? That'll be $2. Buyer: Yeah I want them. But Fort Knox doesn't have enough gold yet, so I don't have the dollar bills right now. Fruit Vendor: No problem. Bring me an IOU from your bank that says you're good for it. (The Invention of Paper Money)
- ty6853 1y agoDollar bills under the circa pre-Nixon gold standard were IOU for gold, there was no need to have enough gold to cover them as it was a fractional reserve.
- triceratops 1y agoSo why gold? Why not buildings or factories or railroads or ports?
- ty6853 1y agoNot going to be answered in a one liner but the short answer is historically it had about the highest density of value that was relatively easy transport, divide, and the inflationary properties though highly imperfect were less susceptible than that of factories or railroads. Humanity came to it empirically. Many people have suggested alternatives such as units of energy or baskets of goods but at the end of the day there is no perfect unit, dollars being backed by essentially largely threat of imprisonment if you don't pay your taxes and scarcity of how many the government decides to 'print' is yet another arbitrary choice of backing.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoHow do you ship fixed infrastructure to another country when they want to redeem their USD?
- triceratops 1y agoYou don't. You give them a title to the infrastructure. Exchange paper for paper. Pretty neat right?
- ty6853 1y agoDeveloped real estate titles are notoriously one of the least fungible assets in existence. Relatively uniform rural undeveloped farmland titles might work but I doubt it would get the same historical inertia since gold outlasts governments more reliably than land titles.