Yes, I recall that Friedman was on board with this and I have heard of the Triffin Dilemma. Still, in the graphs, inflation is not so manifest until after the decoupling.
Not to argue the situation with silver etc. All relevant. While Nixon may not have been the one to start the process I still contend he kicked the can over the cliff.
Your reference to contracting money supply just supports the whole premise that wrong things are done for the right political reasons for the advantage of someone. Nobody gets hard decisions do they?
” While Nixon may not have been the one to start the process I still contend he kicked the can over the cliff.”
I agree with you. I’m not trying to minimize Nixon’s role in lighting the inflation torch.
My point was that inflation had been a problem since the late 1950s, but it was a problem primarily known by central bankers. Inflation wasn’t visible to most Americans until the 1970s after Nixon cut the dollar loose.
Nixon was confronted with the same problem that Kennedy and Johnson had been kicking down the road. And rather than make the hard choices that would have defended the dollar he decided to turn the dollar into a purely fiat currency. Not that Nixon understood what he was doing, there is little indication that any politician has a grasp of monetary theory. Their primary grasp of money is to shove as much of it as possible into their own pockets.