Now I see...

I never thought about how our dollar and gold got disconnected - always assumed it had something to do with FDR banning private ownership of gold in the US.

Well, I was wrong. Nixon also gave us the EPA and OSHA, which have done immense harm to our country by overreaching regulation.
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August 15, 1971: A Date Which Has Lived In Infamy

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  Brian Domitrovic, Contributor

   
  In their impossibly good book Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (2009), Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds make the point that over the last four thousand years, the only period in which humanity has not consistently based its currency in metal, specifically gold, is the last forty. That’s right. Ever since President Richard M. Nixon announced forty years ago today, on August 15, 1971, that the U.S. would no longer officially trade dollars for gold, we have been enjoying a new era of human history.