Happy Birthday, fiat currency!

What, you didn't know that the fiat dollar is 50 years old this month? At least, according to the bankster class and their media lapdogs, it is. Observe:

On 15 August, the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of fiat currency, or a currency that depends on faith in the Federal Reserve and not in the gold standard. Like most 50th anniversaries, this one shows the celebrant worse for wear.

That little gem comes from an article entitled (get this), "The US Fed Can Actually Boost Equality With a Digital Currency."

Right off the bat, if the idea that the fiat dollar is indeed only 50 years old sets off your BS meter, then congratulations! Your BS meter is working. The actual story of the fiat dollar is a much longer and more complex one. The short version goes like this: the fiat dollar was not born in 1971. That was the year of the so-called "Nixon shock," when President Nixon officially severed the gold/dollar link by closing the gold window and thus preventing foreign governments from knocking on the US Treasury's door and asking it to convert their piles of dollars into stacks of gold. Even that story is a much longer and complex one (if you're interested, enjoy some light bedtime reading on De Gaulle vs. the Dollar and The London Gold Pool), but the gist is that the Nixon shock was just the final nail in the gold-backed dollar's coffin, not a magical moment in which the dollar suddenly became fiat.