Not to mention the eradication of the last radical elements of the labor movement and the murder of civil rights leaders.
Caused by the French loading up a destroyer with federal reserve notes, sailing it into New York, and demanding gold for them, as had been promised. The US had been printing money to pay for the Vietnam war and couldn’t give France the gold. Thus Nixon cancelled the gold standard and tragedy ensued for the American people.
I’ve been wanting to learn more about the French ship but details are maddeningly sparse.
Mostly true, but my understanding is they actually did give France the gold.
Then after that they changed the law to stop everyone else from doing it before their reserves ran dry.
"In August 1971, French president Pompidou sent a battleship to New York harbor to remove France’s gold from the vault of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and to transport it to the Banque de France in Paris. Soon thereafter, gold accounted for 92 percent of French reserves.
On August 11, the British requested that the Treasury remove the $3 billion of gold from the U.S. depository of Fort Knox to the New York Federal Reserve vault, where the gold of foreign governments was stored.
As Paul Volcker, who was then treasury undersecretary for monetary affairs, put it: “If the British, who had founded the system with us, and who had fought so hard to defend their own currency, were going to take gold for their dollars, it was clear the game was indeed over.”
When Nixon spoke on August 15, 1971, the U.S. held less than 10,000 tons of gold, less than half of what it once had."
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3545&context=faculty_scholarship
