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Events/Law or policy · 1971

Nixon ends dollar convertibility into gold

Law or policy, 15 August 1971, United States.

What happened

Nixon announced the New Economic Policy on 15 August 1971. The dollar had been fixed at $35 an ounce of gold. The policy closed the gold window and the Bretton Woods system ended in the following years.1,2

Why it matters

Gold ceased to have a fixed dollar price.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Bretton Woods conference

    Bretton Woods conference.3

  2. US Vice President Wallace visits the Kolyma gold camps

    The managers hid that gold was mined mainly by prisoners and misstated output.4,5

  3. London Gold Pool formed

    Its collapse was a step on the way to the end of dollar convertibility.6,7

  4. Grasberg mine area: Wikidata inception date

    The Papua copper-gold mine is dated to 1972 in Wikidata.8

  5. Placer Dome founded

    Placer Dome founded.9

  6. Giant Mine strike explosion

    The mine's later arsenic trioxide legacy made Giant a major remediation case.10,11

  7. Vaal Reefs gold mine disaster, South Africa

    Wikidata records 104 deaths.12

  8. Northparkes block cave air blast

    Northparkes was the first block caving mine in Australia, and the Coroner's findings shaped how block caving is regulated there.13,14

Open the full timeline

Where next

Events

Came out ofLondon Gold Pool formedThe pool collapsed in March 1968. On 15 August 1971 Nixon closed the gold window.1Came out ofBretton Woods conferenceThe gold-dollar link set up at Bretton Woods ended with the Nixon announcement of 1971.15An example ofSilver price collapse after the Hunt silver squeezeAfter gold floated in 1971, silver futures had their own crisis in March 1980.16

Sources

  1. Nixon and the End of the Bretton Woods System, 1971-1973 US Department of State, Office of the Historian
  2. Washington, D.C. (item Q61), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Wikidata item Q188532 (Bretton Woods conference)
  4. Three Days in Auschwitz without Gas Chambers: Henry A. Wallace Visit to Magadan in 1944 Wilson Center
  5. Wikidata item Q7968 (Magadan)
  6. Nixon Ends Convertibility of U.S. Dollars to Gold and Announces Wage/Price Controls (covers the London Gold Pool) Federal Reserve History
  7. London (item Q84), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  8. Wikidata item Q119297 (Grasberg Mine)
  9. Wikidata item Q3390766 (Placer Dome founded)
  10. Giant Mine Historical Timeline Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
  11. Giant Mine (item Q1423887), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  12. Wikidata item Q119821776 (Vaal Reefs mining disaster)
  13. 1999 Northparkes Air Blast case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  14. Parkes (item Q605513), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  15. Creation of the Bretton Woods System Federal Reserve History
  16. History of the CFTC in the 1980s US Commodity Futures Trading Commission

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Underground mining equipment by Kaupo Kikkas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).