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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Small Size, post: 2384857, member: 77924&quot;]You mean &quot;Bretton Woods&quot;, as in &quot;Bretton Woods conference&quot;. That was a post World War Two meeting where the major currencies were all pegged to the dollar, and by extension to one another. Among other things, it allowed foreign banks to exchange dollars for gold at a set rate. This lasted until 1971, when the US was forced by circumstances to end it. This marks the last moment the dollar was defined for any purpose as a specific amount of gold, and so is mourned by goldbugs as the end of &quot;real&quot; money.</p><p>United States Notes were a post Civil War anomaly. The law required a fixed amount of them to be in circulation. As overturning it meant a pointless nine-figure increase in the national debt, this was not done until the 1970&#039;s, when inflation made the amount sufficiently insignificant that voiding it was cheaper than continuing to print and sort USN&#039;s.</p><p>Parenthetically, it was my receiving a 1963 $5 USN as birthday money as a child that made me a currency collector.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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