Fifty-Five Years of Fiat Failure: Peter Schiff
Fifty-Five Years of Fiat Failure
Peter Schiff: 8-15-2026
Peter Schiff marks 55 years since Nixon closed the gold window and warns the coming inflation will dwarf the stagflation of the 1970s.
Peter Schiff marks the 55th anniversary of August 15, 1971, the day Nixon closed the gold window and defaulted on the Federal Reserve's promise to redeem dollars in gold.
He explains how deficit spending in the 1960s on the Great Society, Vietnam, and Apollo forced the choice between painful fiscal discipline and default, and how Nixon chose default disguised as reform.
Schiff traces the fallout: the collapse of the dollar's purchasing power, gold soaring from $35 to $850 by 1980, stagflation that confounded Keynesians, and the erosion of single-income American households.
Freed from gold's discipline, the government ran up massive debts, hollowed out the industrial base, and turned the world's largest creditor into its biggest debtor, with the national debt exploding from under $400 billion to over $28 trillion.
He argues gold is as underpriced today as it was in 1971, that the Fed under Warsh is stoking the very inflation it claims to fight, and that just as the world went off the gold standard, it will soon go off the dollar standard with far more devastating consequences.
His advice: follow Charles de Gaulle's example and exchange fiat money for real money before it's too late.
Chapters: 00:00
Nixon Shuts Gold Window
00:48 How Dollars Became Paper
03:08 1960s Spending Hits Limits
04:35 Nixon Chooses Default
06:51 Stagflation Fallout
09:05 Reserve Currency Abuse
10:23 Debt and Dollar Reckoning
11:12 2026 Inflation Warning
12:09 Protect Yourself With Gold
12:42 Final Call to Action