The place that caused all the confusion beginning in 1936, in 1971. Bettmann Archive Recently the value of all gold in the world has risen to about $25 trillion. Not so long ago—under the Federal Reserve chairmanship of Janet Yellen, even—this stash carried a value only three-eighths as much. Total world gold was worth less…
The gold standard is a profile in power. So LBJ conspired to get rid of it. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) Getty Images The gold standard did not prevent the hyperinflation of the 1970s, or the slowdown in growth the American economy in the 2000s. The gold standard ended in 1971—what can it mean that…
We should put him on a coin (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images) Roger Viollet via Getty Images A few years ago I wrote a piece, for Public Discourse, called “Montesquieu and the Monetary System.” It discussed our having fiat money, non-gold-standard money, today, from the perspective of the eighteenth century French legal sage, Montesquieu….
The designers of the policy mix, Kennedy and Dillon. Bettmann Archive Why did Bitcoin come to be? The computer science revolution gave us the possibility of a blockchain. All sorts of neat things can be done with the blockchain, including trading unique pieces of online property that keep their nature after the trade—currency, in a…
Artistic coins died here. The gold repository at Fort Knox, (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images) Getty Images In 1936, the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, opened. Opened—not the mot juste. The federal government piled gold bars upon gold bars into this huge brand-new vault deep in the ground. An army base (Fort…