AMERICAN DECLINE: 50 Years of Fiat Money Takes Its Toll

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At LewRockwell.com, former congressman and presidential candidate, Ron Paul, reminds Americans that it’s been 50 years since Nixon closed the gold window and took the country completely onto a fiat monetary system. He writes (abridged):

Today marks 50 years since President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window,” ending the ability of foreign governments to exchange United States dollars for gold. Nixon’s action severed the last link between the dollar and gold, giving the U.S. a fiat currency.

America’s experiment with fiat has led to an explosion of consumer, business, and — especially — government debt. It has also caused increasing economic inequality, a boom-bubble-bust business cycle, and a continued erosion of the dollar’s value.

Nixon’s closure of the gold window motivated me to run for office. Having read the works of the leading Austrian economists, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, I understood the dangers of abandoning gold for a fiat currency and wanted a platform to spread these ideas.

By the mid-1980s, any interest among the political and financial elites in questioning the Fed’s power had disappeared. This was due to acceptance of the myth that Paul Volcker tamed inflation. In the 1990s, a virtual cult of personality arose around the “Maestro” Alan Greenspan, who once told me that the Fed had learned how to “replicate” the results of a gold-backed currency.

While my warnings that the Fed was leading the American economy over the cliff were dismissed in Washington, they found a receptive audience outside the beltway. The response to my 2008 presidential campaign led to a birth of a new liberty movement that put monetary policy front and center.

The 2008 meltdown, big banks bailouts, and the Fed’s subsequent failure to reignite the economy despite unprecedented money creation fueled the growth of the new movement. My Campaign for Liberty organization mobilized the new liberty movement to make Audit the Fed a major issue in Congress.

Dr. Ron Paul is a former member of Congress and Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute.

Read more here.

Ron Paul has been a tireless advocate for the preservation of the American dollar’s value and the end of the Federal Reserve system that weakens it. Read more about Paul here:

• Ron Paul: End the Fed
• Ron Paul’s End the Fed Puts America on Track
• Ron Paul: “Freedom and Central Banking Are Not Compatible”
• Ron Paul (America’s Greatest) and the Tyranny of Fedcoin
• Ron Paul: Secret Fed Bond Buying Program Ripe for Crooked Deals