We are approaching the 50th anniversary of the so-called Nixon Shock, one the most decisive ruptures in monetary history. On August 15, 1971, US President Richard Nixon announced in a televised address that he was “closing the gold window.” By ending the dollar’s convertibility into gold (at an official rate of $35 per ounce), Nixon severed the millennia-long link between money and precious metals. This epochal event has uncanny resonances today. For example, just as Nixon was struggling to extricate the United States from its long, costly, and unwinnable war in Vietnam, US President Joe Biden has now ended America’s ... (full story)