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If it breaks a certain threshold, then you can be certain it will be the global reserve currency again. People often forget how stable the world economy was under Bretton Woods.



This is a kind of revisionist argument that I read a lot. The Bretton Woods system only existed for about 30 years until it collapsed from a variety of pressures; it was unsustainable. Even during its short lifetime various suboptimal policy adjustments were required to maintain it.

I think it's a mistake to attribute the stability of the post-war world economy to the Bretton Woods system alone; there are numerous factors that coincided. Bretton Woods probably helped to some extent insofar as it allowed the US to rapidly exert a lot of influence, but we in the US still do that now without the Bretton Woods system.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/nixon-shock


There's not enough gold to go around. Gold isn't a very stable base for economies, as we can see throughout the hundreds of years of gold standards




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