A closer look
President Richard Nixon permanently severed the United States dollar from the gold standard in 1971, officially ending the Bretton Woods system and transforming the global reserve into a completely unbacked fiat currency. Before this aggressive political maneuver, foreign governments could theoretically exchange their US dollars for actual physical gold from the American reserves, which actively kept government spending somewhat in check. By abruptly canceling this convertibility, Nixon effectively gave the federal government the unlimited magical power to print infinite amounts of money out of thin air to fund massive deficits and foreign wars. Every single dollar in your wallet right now fundamentally possesses value solely because we are all collectively trapped in a desperate, globally mandated hallucination where we politely agree not to panic about the fact that our entire financial system is backed by absolutely nothing but vibes and military threats
