>People love to bring up the gold chart and be like "what happened in the 1970s!". It wasn't ending the gold standard that was the problem. It was the endless deficit spending; if you want to get a handle on inflation you need current demand to match current production.
The deficit spending is the reason why we had to leave the gold standard. France, for example, sent a battleship to NYC to retrieve their gold. The US government realized that they could not give out gold for all the dollars that they spent, and went into default on that obligation. The gold standard could have kept the government honest. But they were given too much slack and they abused it to the point of having to break promises officially.
The Fed cannot actually destroy all the money that they created. But they could start by not printing any more. They won't do that but they theoretically could.
The deficit spending is the reason why we had to leave the gold standard. France, for example, sent a battleship to NYC to retrieve their gold. The US government realized that they could not give out gold for all the dollars that they spent, and went into default on that obligation. The gold standard could have kept the government honest. But they were given too much slack and they abused it to the point of having to break promises officially.
The Fed cannot actually destroy all the money that they created. But they could start by not printing any more. They won't do that but they theoretically could.