The History of Paper Money - The Gold Standard - Extra History - Part 6

📜 History of Paper Money! Part 6
Even as the use of paper money grew, ties to the gold standard remained... and remained challenging. From the First Opium War to the Great Depression, events around the world stretched the capacity of bullion-based economics. So what - and who - finally abandoned it?

*Miss an episode in our History of Paper Money Series?*

#ExtraHistory #Money #History

[SovietWomble]

Very interesting batch of episodes! Nicely done.

[Monochromicornicopia]

This explains so much. Now I understand why life seemed better in the 40's and 50's to old people: The U.S. was riding high on a very profitable world war.

[LeiosLabs]

Man, this series is worth it's weight in gold!

[bridgecross]

"We accepted money as the medium by which things are exchanged, not the value for which they are." I love clear and concise explanations like that.

[InMaTeofDeath]

So it got too complicated to deal with and humans said fuck it.

[TheMaplestrip]

The great thing is: this series indirectly helps me understand so many historical events, like the good rush and the great depression. fascinating series, guys, awesome work!

[Gilhelmi]

Some people may not have thought about this yet, but there are probably retired economics experts that started their careers on the Gold standard. Who may have even debated the topic and helped steer the course of history.

EC, find these men and women of history and interview them. They are still with us, but will be in their 70's. Hurry, time is short.

[Alverant]

Thanks for mentioning how devastated France was after WWII. A lot of people in the US give France grief for surrendering to the Nazis. The thing is they didn't have the means to fight back and did the only thing they could do for their own survival. Given how the French Resistance helped the Allies, calling them cowards is an insult to their sacrifices. I think they deserve their own Extra History segment, if only as a one-shot.

[LaZodiac]

It's hilarious that money exists the way it does...basically because of apathy. "I'm too tired to work out our system so let's just peg it on the dollar" "But the dollar isn't worth anything anymore they don't have it attached to gold!" "EH"

[chris]

wow, this is FASCINATING. I always found economics boring and went cross-eyed when history books talked about the gold standard, but I'd never thought before about how much impact it really had on the parts of history I do find interesting.

[KnakuanaRka]

3:21 Seeing the one guy take a bite out of the pink money just made my day. Hooray for EH’s humor!

[TheDen]

I love how these economic series combine interesting characters like John Law and can take the long view with explaining how both world wars tanked the gold standard. It's a really nice balance

[Bottlekiller]

One ounce is like 4 kilometers, right?

[laterkater]

I think it's also pretty amazing that we went from being paid for our work in cash, to cheques you could redeem for cash, to straight up 1s and 0s on a computer. I now just believe I have money, even though I only ever see a tiny fraction of it.

[gosucab]

In other words the problem was solved by not giving a shit.

[GoodGarret]

The power of british patriocism is a force beyond measure.

[ckbooks]

Another awesome and fascinating EH series. Topics like this, the South Sea Bubble, and the Brothers Gracchi are among my favourites on the channel, because they're not only interesting tales from history, but also incredibly educational parts of it that inform and contextualise a lot of how the world works today. Watching EH has really opened my eyes to the importance of history as a subject of study because of how much it allows us to understand modern society and make informed decisions in the future based on the successes and failures of the past.

It's helped me to realise, more than anything, than nobody ever taught me in school *why* we study history, and as a result I regarded it as little more than "stories about the past". But history is so much more than that, and I hope that in the future more educators can take a page from Extra History's book and not just teach students about the past, but explain to them why it's so pertinently relevant to the present and future.

[fireaza]

You could say Nixon nixed the gold standard!

[inser]

Interesting Fact: US was able to stay on the Gold Standard via the Silver Purchase Act of 1934 by screwing over the Chinese Republic. China, which had been recently unified by the KMT continued the Qing Dynasty practice of using the Silver Standard while most of the World used the Gold Standard prior to the Great Depression. So when the Great Depression hit most countries were unable to keep monetary supply with the demand of Gold and therefore forced to leave but since China was on the Silver standard it was largely unaffected. However in 1934, the US government attempted to combat its issues of monetary supply by passing the Silver Purchase Act of 1934 and started to issue silver certificates and purchase large quantities of silver against the protests of the KMT. This lead to massive deflation and the inability of China to export its goods abroad which lead to economic problems in China, disillusion in capitalism and the international economy and growing discontentment along with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party.

[JasonTRogers]

That was a great history lesson. You guys put a lot of work into that. Thank you. Not only was it entertaining it is also very important to know. Thank you