Sailing Without an Anchor!
By Puru Saxena
June 16, 2006
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Saxena/jun162006.html
... "On 15 August 1971, US President Nixon shut the “gold window”, thereby removing gold from the monetary system. The result was inevitable – currencies started floating against each other and without gold as the anchor, nations gave up on their monetary discipline. A fabulous new era of “endless prosperity” had arrived! Central banks became obsessed with monetary inflation, world-trade benefited and the world’s foreign exchange reserves exploded. Figure 1 captures this development in all its glory. In 1971, the non-gold reserves of all countries were worth US$100 billion and today these have grown to roughly $4.3 trillion – an alarming 43-fold increase in 35 years!" ...
... "Once currencies were no longer linked to gold, the global economy became a ship without an anchor, floating from one “boom and bust” cycle to another!" ...