Henry Hazlitt on how FDR suspended gold conversion for Americans in April 1933

The possibility of a discriminatory capital-gains tax on gold ‘profits,’ or even of outright confiscation, cannot be wholly dismissed.  We must remember that in 1933, when private citizens began to exercise their clear legal right to convert their Federal Reserve notes and gold certificates into gold, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the conversion, ordered the citizens to exchange their gold for paper money, and made it illegal for private citizens to hold or own gold.  In other words, the government not only broke its solemn and explicit pledge to convert its notes into gold on demand, but treated the holder (and dupe) who had taken the pledge seriously as the real culprit.  And the Supreme Court later upheld the president’s act and the new law. 

~ Henry Hazlitt

1933 St. Gaudens $20, world's most valuable coin,
sold at auction for $18.9 million in 2021

Richard Nixon on closing the gold window

In recent weeks, the speculators have been waging an all-out war on the American dollar.  The strength of a nation's currency is based on the strength of that nation's economy, and the American economy is by far the strongest in the world...  Accordingly, I have directed [Treasury] Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interests of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States...  Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called "devaluation."  If you want to buy a foreign car or take a trip abroad, market conditions may cause your dollar to buy slightly less.  But, if you are among the overwhelming majority of Americans who buy American made products in America, your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.

~ President Richard Nixon, Bretton Woods speech, August 15, 1971