Killing the Gold Standard
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
April 18, 1933. It’s almost midnight in Washington, DC. Newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has gathered his economic advisors for a late-night meeting. He called this meeting to announce his plan to effectively take the US off the gold standard, the system by which every paper dollar is tied to a certain amount of literal gold. To his advisors, this is inconceivable. Money is gold. Without gold backing the dollar, what even is money in the first place? But the president is resolute. The gold standard has driven America into the Great Depression, and he plans to drag it back out. How did FDR’s decision change the way Americans conceived of money? And how did killing the gold standard save the country?
Special thanks to our guest, Jacob Goldstein, host of the podcast Planet Money and author of Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.4 | History this week, April 18, 1933. |
| 0:10.6 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:14.0 | At the White House, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has gathered his |
| 0:18.8 | economic advisors for a late night meeting. |
| 0:22.4 | He has been meeting with them a lot. |
| 0:25.1 | Roosevelt took office about six weeks ago and the great depression is ravaging |
| 0:30.8 | the country. |
| 0:31.6 | The US economy is basically at a standstill. |
| 0:34.6 | Unemployment is at an all-time high. |
| 0:37.1 | Banks are collapsing left and right. |
| 0:39.6 | It really feels like an economic apocalypse. |
| 0:43.6 | But FDR has a plan and he's going to reveal it tonight. |
| 0:50.8 | He tells his advisors, |
| 0:53.1 | I want to talk about the Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act. |
| 1:00.2 | This may sound like absolutely the most boring thing in the world. |
| 1:04.6 | But Roosevelt's advisors are stunned. |
| 1:09.2 | One of them later says, |
| 1:11.3 | at that moment, hell broke loose. |
| 1:15.0 | Because with this obscure amendment to an agricultural bill, |
| 1:20.0 | Roosevelt wants to do something completely radical. |
| 1:24.0 | He wants to change a fundamental fact about the US economy. |
... |
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