“...after President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933...”
Uh, nice try AP.
What the stinking, stupid, socialist bastard did was outlaw the private ownership of gold, orchestrate banking “holidays” to get control of deposit boxes, and then mandated that a banking officer be present whenever a deposit box was opened and to confiscate all gold.
Also, he did not take us off the gold standard. He cut back the gold reserve to dollar ratio. It was Nixon who finally took us off the gold standard completely.
By outlawing the possession of gold, Roosevelt did take us off the gold standard domestically for all practical purposes.
Nixon simply closed the Gold exchange window to foreign governments. If he hadn't, Ft. Knox would have been cleaned out by European countries repatriating U.S. Marshall Plan dollars.
” orchestrate banking “holidays” to get control of deposit boxes”
The bank holidays were intended to halt bank runs, I don’t think it had anything to do with the gold issue. If there were breaches of safe deposit boxes during the bank holidays I’ve never heard of them.
Gold was being revalued in order to expand the money supply. The money supply had fallen by 30% over Hoover’s last three years as credit collapsed, and revaluing gold from $20 to $33 served to increase the monetary base. It didn’t cure the Depression, so all it really managed to do was reduce the personal economic freedom of Americans and increase the future prospects for inflation.
The Idiot on the Dime.