40th anniversary of Nixon Closing the Gold Window.

40 years ago Nixon took us off the Bretton Woods gold standard blaming speculators for what was decades of poor US fiscal policy.  The more things change the more they stay the same.  Paying for a war and social programs that we couldn't afford caused a crisis in confidence.  Same then as now.  Gold or a AAA rating from S+P it is always something other than poor government policy that is to blame by politicians.

UPDATE:  Gold closed today at $1763 oz.. 40 years ago we closed the gold window at $35 oz..  This represents a 10.3% compounded annual return in gold.  Not too bad for something that you can bury in the backyard instead of trusting your money to a "too big to fail" bank or Wall Street.

Another way to look at it is a dollar was 1/35 oz of gold in 1971 and is now a 1/1763 oz of gold.