On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 14:15, Nic Roets <nro...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Brendan Morley <morb....@beagle.com.au>wrote: > >> >> Um, what happened in October 2008? >> >> > If you look at the percentage change in US GDP and you compare it to the > 1800s and the early 1900s, then you will come to the conclusion that nothing > happened. The economic contraction was very mild. > > That is more than 30 years after the US left the gold standard. By no means > cause and effect. > > >From http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/gold_standard.htm
[...] private gold ownership (except for the purposes of jewelery). The Bretton Woods System<http://economics.about.com/library/glossary/bldef-bretton-woods-system.htm>, enacted in 1946 created a system of fixed exchange rates<http://economics.about.com/library/weekly/aa022703a.htm>that allowed governments to sell their gold to the United States treasury at the price of $35/ounce. "The Bretton Woods system ended on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon ended trading of gold at the fixed price of $35/ounce. At that point for the first time in history, formal links between the major world currencies and real commodities were severed". The gold standard has not been used in any major economy since that time. >From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7725157.stm *Financial globalisation* On the other hand, the end of the Bretton Woods system unleashed two decades of financial globalisation, encouraged by the deregulation not just of currency markets, but also of rules about banking and investment. This led to increased flows of private money to rich and poor countries alike, which helped boost growth but also created greater instability. The rapid reversal of such private sector flows when currencies were threatened with devaluation was the central cause of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, which spread to Russia and eventually Argentina. The resources of the IMF proved inadequate to compensate for the run on their currencies, and the adjustment proved painful, with sharp falls in GDP.
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