Is it possible or realistic to have our American dollar backed again (by gold or silver, etc)?
America went of the Gold Standard in either 1971 or 1972. It was ultimately precipitated by the British Ambassador showing up at the Treasury and withdrawing a sizable portion of the nations bullion in payment for Federal Reserve Notes. The Treasury had lost about 33% of its gold from the end of World War II until the collapse of Bretton Woods. It simply had to go off gold or risk getting so close to the legal reserves that you could have had an economic collapse. The gold standard was the cause of the Great Depression, all the other “causes,” were really manifestations of the gold standard’s effects. The nineteenth century was filled with depressions and boom periods. They were triggered by the supply shifts of precious metals and not real variables such as production changes or harvest changes. The problem with gold is that it is difficult to transport and supply is very inelastic. If we were on gold right now, under our current banking crisis, we would be facing certain collapse or
