The government price of gold has changed only four times from 1792 to the present day. Finally, in August 1971, President Nixon announced that the United States would end the on-demand convertibility of the dollar into gold for the central banks of other countries. Unlike the classic gold standard, capital controls were allowed to allow governments to stimulate their economies without suffering financial market penalties. Therefore, with the passage of this law, the central banking system of this country formally renounced one of the main privileges and duties it had exercised before the suspension of payments in gold.
As a result, the Gold Price Per Gram has become an important indicator for investors and traders to monitor. This also meant that the Gold Price Per Gram was no longer fixed and could fluctuate depending on market conditions. The current organization has lost its power to formulate an independent credit policy and can no longer regulate the flow of funds in and out of this country, as it did when the United States used the gold standard. Monetary gold included all coins and ingots held by individuals and institutions, including the Federal Reserve. On June 5, 1933, the United States abandoned the gold standard, a monetary system in which the currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution that annulled the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. Facing similar pressures, Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931 and Roosevelt took note.
Article 12 of the Act authorized the president to establish the value of the dollar in gold by proclamation. The chronic trade deficit in the United States exhausted US gold reserves, but there was considerable resistance to the idea of devaluing the dollar against gold; in any case, this would have required an agreement between countries with surpluses to increase their exchange rates against the dollar in order to achieve the necessary adjustment. The preponderance of that gold remains the property of the Treasury, although much of it physically resides in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The provisions of the Act did not apply to gold in foreign countries or to gold mined after the adoption of the Act.
The Treasury could use the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) to buy or sell gold, foreign currencies, financial securities and other financial instruments in order to control the value of the dollar and conduct open market operations without the help (or approval) of the Federal Reserve. U.S. citizens have been able to do so freely and legally since 1974, when President Ford signed an act of Congress that allowed U.S. citizens to own and trade in gold.
In March 1968, a two-tier gold market was introduced with a free-floating private market and official transactions at a fixed parity.
