When Roosevelt Ditched the Gold Standard
To bring the economy out of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard in 1933.Â
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As the U.S. banking crisis ebbed in early 1933, central-bank gold reserves were rising, and gold-based currency notes were steadily flowing back into accounts. The country was experiencing a positive balance of trade.
"Not one of the conditions usually attendant to a suspension of gold payments was present at the time," the Economist magazine would write in May.