hey guys, i just registered but i've been lurking for a while and i think you all can help me with my question.

i always thought the u.s. government had a lot of gold in fort knox to 'back up' the paper money we have, but my friend said that isn't true and that the money isn't backed by anything. is that true, or is my friend insane?

thanks in advance.

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saber man

American money used to be backed by gold, I think it was in the 1950s that the president changed it, now it is not backed by anything but the American government's word.

What?!

/me ditches his plans to raid fort knox

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no, the gold is still there.... but we have printed more money than there is gold.

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Gold may be there. But regardless, we aren't on the gold standard anymore so it means nothing. There was a movement in the 1800's about moving to bimetallism(using gold and silver to back the dollar) but that died.

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Andrew Jackson did away with paper currency back in the 1830s, where he would only allow specie (gold or silver coinage) to pay debts, but during the Civil War, the US issued Greenbacks, which are the forefathers of the money we have today, which is backed up only by the word of our government.

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You used to be able to go to a bank and exchange any money you had for gold, and then silver in the late 1800s, but since the US went off the gold standard, you can't do that anymore.
The greenbacks from the Civil War were backed by gold.

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

We went off the Gold Standard in the late 1890s or early 1900s iirc because of the Whining of the Farmers and William Jennings Bryant.

We officially got off the Silver Standard (which replaced the Gold Standard) in 1962 or 63 IIRC (It was during the 60s in any case)...

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Add 106 to my post count for my old name NapoleoneXIV

The Gold Standard was abandoned by the US in 1971 when Nixon ceased the practice of the government promising to buy gold at a certain rate. The rest of the world abandoned the Gold Standard up to 50 years earlier.

These days curriences are floated against each other. Money is 'backed-up' by the governments promise to buy another county's currency at a rate against their own, not against gold. Gold has absolutely no determaning relationship with a currency.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

Yeah. Our currency depends on the polidiots (politicians + idiots) in Washington. I don't think our Founding Fathers wanted that.

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<scribbly handwriting barely resembling name>

So wait - if foreign countries decided American money was worthless and that they wanted something of value, we couldn't really do anything?

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Duel Zero key count: Zero! Down to guns and forces. Expect a release soon.

Yeah basically, but as it stands now it is pretty much America who decides they think a country's currency is worthless and then that counties money becomes worthless.

Howdy! Glad you decided to start posting.

There is gold in Fort Knox and in the Philladelphia Mint, but the amount of gold there is not related in any way to the value of the dollar. The dollar only has value because we all agree that it has value. Of course, that's the only reason why gold or anything else has value, but that's a discussion for another time.

The Federal Reserve Board headed by Alan Greenspan changes the interest rates and can manipulate a few other variables to manipulate the value of the dollar. If you want to learn more I suggest you do some research on the monetarist school of economics and their theories.

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A good ammount of our gold is stored in soem of the underground bases and tunnelways that honeycomb our country.

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Correct, and currencies have crashed like that in the past. But that would never happen to the US, mainly due to the volume and importance of your imports and exports.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.