This is a common talking point, but much of what you’ve said isn’t true. We did not have enough gold to cover every dollar the whole time under Bretton Woods, about 65% at the end of WW2, and it wasn’t out of the blue that Nixon withdrew from the agreement.
If we had tried to maintain that system, we would have either lost all our gold due to countries taking advantage of the price difference between the peg and gold markets worldwide, or we would have had to restrict dollar supply to the point we would no longer be the reserve currency of the world, neither of which were in our country’s interest.
This is a common talking point, but much of what you’ve said isn’t true. We did not have enough gold to cover every dollar the whole time under Bretton Woods, about 65% at the end of WW2, and it wasn’t out of the blue that Nixon withdrew from the agreement.
If we had tried to maintain that system, we would have either lost all our gold due to countries taking advantage of the price difference between the peg and gold markets worldwide, or we would have had to restrict dollar supply to the point we would no longer be the reserve currency of the world, neither of which were in our country’s interest.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Late_application