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Aren't you confusing two things? When Nixon suspended Bretton Woods, he wasn't refusing to repatriate gold, he was reneging on the promise that dollars could be

Aren't you confusing two things? When Nixon suspended Bretton Woods, he wasn't refusing to repatriate gold, he was reneging on the promise that dollars could be converted into gold (one of the reasons being that it no longer had enough physical gold to redeem). So countries like France held dollars and could no longer get them converted to gold. From my reading, before 1971, all the requests to convert dollars by France, Switzerland, and the UK were all honoured, contributing to the crisis. I don't believe anyone were refused conversion until 1971. And even then, everyone still had their dollars. All they lost was the ability to redeem for gold according to the fixed Bretton Woods price. Dollars could still be used to buy gold at market value. But this article is talking about repatriating gold owned by other governments but physically held in vaults by the US. A bunch of countries (including Germany) have already repatriated vast amount that were housed by the US, and those requests have never been refused. The Federal Reserve is said to even keeps the bars owned by other countries physically separate, rather than commingled.

direwolf20 9mo ago
That's a refusal to repatriate, since other countries had sent their gold to the US to exchange for dollars with the understanding they could exchange it back at an time.
- atombender 9mo ago
  Is that happened? I'm not an expert on the history of Bretton Woods, but my understanding is countries that sent gold to be stored in the US retained ownership over it, and repatriation was never refused. If they had converted gold to dollars, this only suspended their ability to "rebalance" between gold and dollars, and no value was lost.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    The dollars were worth a small fraction of the gold. It's true that no value was lost — because that value was transferred from the other countries to the US.
    - atombender 9mo ago
      That doesn't sound right. Money is fungible. Anyone who missed the "window" to convert in 1971 (which major countries like UK, Germany, and France didn't, as far as I can see) still had their dollars. The US-domiciled gold that backed the dollars had always belong the US; so the dollars being an "IOU" makes sense in a colloquial sense, I guess, but it's a gross simplification that misses the broader point about how Bretton Woods affected monetary policy. It shifted the US into being able to maintain a permanent trade deficit, and the US was free to devalue the dollar (effectively the world's default currency) without repercussion, which is good for the US but not for everyone else.
      - direwolf20 9mo ago
        The dollars were worth much less than the gold. As soon as you couldn't exchange dollars for gold any more, the value of a dollar fell by a factor of several to reflect that.

direwolf20 9mo ago

That's a refusal to repatriate, since other countries had sent their gold to the US to exchange for dollars with the understanding they could exchange it back at an time.

atombender 9mo ago
Is that happened? I'm not an expert on the history of Bretton Woods, but my understanding is countries that sent gold to be stored in the US retained ownership over it, and repatriation was never refused. If they had converted gold to dollars, this only suspended their ability to "rebalance" between gold and dollars, and no value was lost.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  The dollars were worth a small fraction of the gold. It's true that no value was lost — because that value was transferred from the other countries to the US.
  - atombender 9mo ago
    That doesn't sound right. Money is fungible. Anyone who missed the "window" to convert in 1971 (which major countries like UK, Germany, and France didn't, as far as I can see) still had their dollars. The US-domiciled gold that backed the dollars had always belong the US; so the dollars being an "IOU" makes sense in a colloquial sense, I guess, but it's a gross simplification that misses the broader point about how Bretton Woods affected monetary policy. It shifted the US into being able to maintain a permanent trade deficit, and the US was free to devalue the dollar (effectively the world's default currency) without repercussion, which is good for the US but not for everyone else.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      The dollars were worth much less than the gold. As soon as you couldn't exchange dollars for gold any more, the value of a dollar fell by a factor of several to reflect that.