most people think that President Nixon's criminal activities were limited to wiretapping and spying on the competition but his greatest crime came on August 15 1971 when he severed the last ties between the dollar and gold when he ended the Bretton Woods system [Music] happy birthday August 15th of 2021 is the 50th birthday of the current version of the US dollar and as Jim Rickards reminded us 50 years is a golden anniversary so this is the golden anniversary since the abandonment of gold we abandoned gold 50 years today so


um you know the dollar for me is sort of a love-hate relationship uh the dollar is what the Fiat dollar that we have now is what causes this great wealth transfer and wealth disparity that we have so because it is a love-hate relationship I just want to paraphrase the great Louis Armstrong here and say I'll be glad when you did you rascal you so in this episode I'm going to take a look at episode 9 of hidden secrets of money because a lot of that has to do when with the birth of the new dollar


standard but there was a lot you know you see a lot of these videos of Nixon announcing that we're going off of gold basically ending the Bretton Woods system so in this video we had these wonderful guests uh we were able to just honored by being able to get people like two times presidential candidate Steve Forbes three-time presidential candidate Ron Congressman Ron Paul and the amazingly articulate and gracious Rick rule if you haven't seen Rick rule live and you get a chance to do so make sure


you do see him and you know watch some of his videos he's just absolutely wonderful and my friend and colleague the hands down funniest guy in economics ever Richard Dottie aka the magambo guru they are all in this episode and there's these wonderful animations that link and Jude and Aiden Magnus worked so hard for so long to create these demonstrations of what Rick Rule and what Steve Forbes were telling us uh they're just history lessons in this episode focuses on the parallels between ancient Rome the Roman


Empire and the United States today and I followed this timeline here that stretches from the beginning of Rome and their currency to basements and the constant War to expand their empire and the deficit spending that they did to fund all of that and the horrible consequences it had on the population and then there's some of those amazing animations that I was talking about this is the Temple of Saturn in Rome it was their Treasury and so here's the gold in the Temple of Saturn and then it does


dissolves right into the ruins of the Temple of Saturn and these are done by this is Aiden magnus's uh animation but then Dan got this at the perfect shot to just dissolve that right into the U.S treasury it's the same design and so we're going to take a little bit of a journey here and we're just going to focus on the areas of where Nixon took us off of the gold standard and the consequences that that had and how politicians keep on making the same mistakes over and over again so let's


take a listen to some of this for those new to the series let's revisit the pivotal event that has managed to sneak under the radar of modern historians as nothing more than a side note even though it will have repercussions for generations to come it was an unprecedented Act of global debasement by a modern wannabe emperor that would make any Roman ruler hang his head in shame game most people think that President Nixon's criminal activities were limited to wiretapping and spying on the


competition but his greatest crime came on August 15 1971 when he severed the last ties between the dollar and gold when he ended the Bretton Woods system I have directed secretary Conley to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other Reserve assets except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interest of the United States the Bretton Woods system tied all of the world's currencies to Gold through the U.S dollar but instead of running out


and hanging the guy when he took us the world off of gold the world just yawned and accepted that we were now on a Fiat currency system that we were now on this infinitely expanding system that we no longer had money we had currency now uh what a lot of people don't realize is that in that same speech there was a whole bunch of other stuff where you know inflation had just actually started back in 1971. this is was it wasn't yet when it was raging so uh this was was his response and it was


in that same speech now we'll skip forward another 200 years and government was at it again many people don't realize that Nixon's speech from 1971 also included the announcement of a 90-day wage and price freeze the United States was suffering from Big inflation thanks to deficit spending for the Vietnam War silver had been taken out of circulation in 1965 reducing our coinage to worthless flecks of Base metal and the paper currency Supply had been expanded greatly did that sound familiar just like Diocletian Nixon's


team of economic boffins thought they could curb inflation by fixing wages and prices the time has come for decisive action action that will break the vicious circle of spiraling prices and costs I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days working together we will break the back of inflation you'd think that these people would learn from history but they don't to get an idea of how out of touch the men with their hands on the economic


levers were listen to what Nixon's advisor had to say about the duration of the controls would it be your anticipation that it would take more than 90 days to break the back of inflation as the president put it tonight that there would have to be a further extension of an actual wage freeze I would not uh no I wouldn't uh I I don't think one can say that it will necessarily uh take longer uh we're we're sailing to some extent in an Uncharted sea here but uh this uh this I think is is a reasonable estimate of the


time that's going to be required okay 90 days is three months this is 20 months later now 20 21 months later 21 months is about 640 days they said 90. this is 640 days later then rather Nixon is expected to speak for about 15 minutes on his new economic policies the president's address tonight comes against a background of the following facts among others record high gold prices and rapidly increasing cost of living figures for most Americans the wholesale price index Rose by 2.1 percent during the month of May


the index of industrial Commodities in the last three months has risen at an annual rate of 15.9 percent the worst since the Korean War 20 years ago all of that part of the general background of the president's remarks tonight every American family is confronted with a real and pressing problem of higher prices and I have decided that the time has come to take strong and effective action to deal with that problem effective immediately therefore I am ordering a freeze on prices this freeze will hold prices at levels


no higher than those charged during the first eight days of June it will cover all prices paid by consumers what was else Albert Einstein saying what kind of an idiot would do the same thing over and over expect and expect different results each time and it's the same pattern that's happened repeatedly cycle after cycle after cycle after cycle for thousands of years a country borrows itself into bankruptcy it creates more money to try to pay its debt prices go up people rebel the whole system falls


apart and I'm scared about it countries collapse over this they go to war about this kind of thing rebellion in the street overthrows of government the whole nine yards there is nothing to be gained from inflation and everything to lose and we're going to lose everything so uh you know I've got a couple of comments here uh when you saw uh Nixon's lips super impro imposed on the bust of Diocletian it's because Diocletian was saying these same things back you know during a big inflation in Rome he was


giving the same orders for wage and price freezes and then my friend Richard Dottie here he's having some health issues actually so if you could just wish him well in the comments below this video that would be awesome because he's having some very serious health issues right now uh anyway this is just history repeating and uh these things don't seem to stop and Richard is right here this does lead to war and revolutions and overthrows of governments and so I'm just going to wrap it up with this I'm expecting this


to happen in the United States sometime right now I'm expecting a deflation but when we get to Big inflation or hyperinflation you can pretty much count on the fact that they're going to make the same stupid mistakes because politicians do not read monetary history and so once again I'd just like to say to the US dollar Happy Birthday and I'll be glad when you dead you rascal you thanks for watching