The goal of this piece is to uncover how we arrived in our current monetary system and how it could fail much easier than most people realize. With extremely low trust in our institutions and growing class divides, it is imperative to understand how our fiscal and monetary policy exacerbates these issues. If we as a society want to solve these problems it is also crucial to be radically transparent around the intricacies of our financial system and to make financial education widely understood in an attempt
To frame this essay with the most context possible, I will begin by shedding light on the use of gold in trade and its role in the development of our current global currency standard. For thousands of years resource allocation has been governed by supply and demand and thus our economies have been spurred by trade. Gold and other precious metals enter the picture simply for ease of use. Due to the fact that gold is a tangible and desired asset that can be physically manipulated relatively easily, it functio
Prior to 1944, the gold standard and bi-metallic standard (gold & silver) struggled as power shifted between countries relatively often and currency devaluations were common. In the hectic decades of the 19th century, many economies also shuttered from various shocks, mostly banking system panics. Fast forward to the end of the Great Depression and Theodore Roosevelt signed executive order 6102 which permitted citizens to have their gold be purchased by the government for the pegged rate of $20.67 per ounce