45 years ago today, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon officially closed the gold window. While US citizens had been forbidden from owning gold or from redeeming their gold certificates for gold coins since the early 1930s, foreign governments still had the privilege of redeeming their dollars for gold. Due to the Federal Reserve’s inflationary monetary policy during the 1960s, foreign governments began to redeem more and more dollars for gold. Attempts to encourage other governments (especially France) not to redeem their dollar holdings were unsuccessful, and there was a very real threat that US gold holdings might eventually be exhausted. So President Nixon decided to close the gold window, thus severing the final link between the US dollar and gold. The removal of the restraint of gold redemption freed the Federal Reserve to engage in more inflationary monetary policy than ever. The effects of that on money supply and official price inflation figures are readily apparent.
The demonetization of silver in the Coinage Act of 1873 was widely assailed by its critics as the “Crime of ’73.” Isn’t it about time that Nixon’s closing of the gold window be known as the Crime of ’71?
