Repeal of Gold Standard Requirement

Date: March 18, 1968 • Location: Shaw, United States

Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is defined by a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the late 1920s to 1932 as well as from 1944 until 1971, when the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar into gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system. Many states nonetheless hold substantial gold reserves.