Shiney New Dollar Bill

One ounce of gold in the year 2000 was below $300. For the previous 100 years up to 1973 gold averaged around $35. For frame of reference, the moon landing was in 1969. In 1978 gold jumped, on average, to over $650 then settled to around $350 where is stayed up to the year 2002.  In the next eight years to 2010 it has jumped to well over $1000. Some traders are predicting gold trading at $5000.   That's not much of a forecast stretch since that's less that 5 times increase.   The '73 to '02 increase was between 10 and 20 times.

Great you say. I’ll just scoop up all that “useless” gold I have “laying around” and trade it in for bright, new, shiney dollar bills (yes there are parts of newly printed bills that are shiney.)

Ignoring the complex discussion concerning the benefits of separating the dollar from the gold standard, see if you can determine, based on the information provided above, when the dollar was, by law, de-linked from gold. 

Politicians who get elected spending peoples money don’t want you to know that like it or not you can easily determine the REAL value of your dollar by seeing how much gold it will buy. You can kind of tell that for yourself by keeping track of bread prices.  But in a crunch China's going to want gold.  Rumor has it that China is calling in gold a little at a time so as not to cause panic.

(Update 4/12). . . President Bill Clinton's top adviser, Dick Morris, states this month that the Saudi's, Swiss, (and other countries) will not tolerate being paid for their oil exports in devalued dollars and will raise oil prices to maintain parity with gold values according to the original agreements. So much for taking the Dollar off the gold standard.