Henry Hazlitt on the broken gold promise

We have forgotten that our currency unit, the dollar, was originally a pledge. It was a solemn pledge by the U.S. Government to pay its bearer on demand 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Our government disdainfully repudiated that pledge in 1933. It made another pledge to pay 1/35th of an ounce, not to our own people but to foreign central banks. That pledge was repudiated in 1971.

~ Henry Hazlitt