Gold standard
Johnson signs the law eliminating the gold-cover requirement for U.S. currency
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗A law often mistaken for the end of Bretton Woods was actually sold as a way to save dollar convertibility into gold.
18 March 1968: the signature, not just the vote
On 18 March 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed H.R. 14743 into law as Public Law 90-269 — the decisive act that day was his approval of a bill Congress had already passed, so the common phrasing that 'Congress repealed' the requirement on the 18th is imprecise.
The law eliminated the statutory gold-reserve requirements behind Federal Reserve notes, United States notes, and Treasury notes of 1890, by amending and repealing provisions of the Federal Reserve Act and related statutes.
Freeing $10.7 billion in locked gold
The arithmetic behind the bill was stark. The old rule required gold cover equal to 25 percent of outstanding Federal Reserve-note liabilities, which tied up about $10.7 billion of a roughly $12 billion U.S. gold stock — leaving only about $1.3 billion free.
With foreign dollar-to-gold claims continuing and currency circulation growing, that shrinking free pool made the domestic cover requirement increasingly constraining. Releasing the immobilized gold let it stand behind official international conversion of dollars instead.
Not the end of gold — an attempt to save it
This was not the 1971 Nixon suspension of dollar-gold convertibility. In 1968 the administration explicitly sought to preserve official convertibility at $35 per ounce; the repeal was designed to support the international gold-exchange system, not terminate it.
Nothing changed for a banknote in anyone's wallet that afternoon — ordinary Federal Reserve notes carried no general right of redemption in gold in 1968. What changed was which claims the Treasury's gold could answer. Official dollar-gold convertibility continued until 1971.
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Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes
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