Image via WikipediaThe Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 on a promise of stabilizing the banking system. What followed instead was an unprecedented growth in fractional reserve banking, as well as the money supply, which helped fuel the roaring 20’s. The aggressive money printing created inflated values in bonds and stocks, which peaked in 1929. When the market began its precipitous slide, and the public began to realize that stock and bond values were artificially high, the populace began to convert its cash holdings into gold. The government lacked the ability to satisfy that demand and was thus forced to renege on the currency’s founding promise of gold convertibility. It’s important to point out that without this original promise of convertibility for citizens, the currency may never have been adopted.
In 1933, The Gold Reserve Act was passed by Congress and formalized into law the breaking of the gold standard. This law provided for a controlled-currency issue through the Federal Reserve System which was non-redeemable in gold. Although the link to anything tangible had been broken, the citizens had little choice but to continue using these non-redeemable dollars as a medium of exchange. The currency had already been broadly accepted, proven convenient and a perception of safety had already become entrenched.
After forty years of continued dollar printing, in August, 1971, President Nixon effectively declared the US dollar to be a completely “fiat” currency by refusing to allow foreign governments to convert their US dollar holdings into gold. The right of conversion which had been granted under the post World War II, Bretton Woods agreement could not be honoured because of decades of money supply expansion. The original ‘promise’, which had vaulted US dollar to its status as a global reserve currency and a stable store of value, was now completely broken.
These historical events resulted in a world in which all currencies are fiat; they are not backed by gold or any other tangible asset. The supply is infinite. In fact, the production of today’s newly created paper money in relation to historical commodity-based money is akin to counterfeiting. A US dollar printed today has no ties to anything tangible and as a result carries only four cents of the equivalent purchasing power of a gold-backed dollar of 1913. It is ironic that in a poor choice of wording on Wikipedia, the definition of counterfeiting states that “it is usually pursued aggressively by all governments.” It is only because the evolution of money has occurred slowly over generations that the obvious flaw with fiat currency is not widely understood.
Beware Counterfeiters
