by James Turk
Read the full article on gata.org
An important document buried in the Federal Reserve’s archives has been discovered by writer and researcher Elaine Supkis. This document is posted on her blog.
The document, which is marked “Confidential,” is from the papers of William McChesney Martin Jr., and this collection is held by the Missouri Historical Society. A scanned image of the original document is posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Martin was the longest-serving chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and worked there under five U.S. presidents from April 1951 to January 1970. It was during his tenure that the dollar devolved from “as good as gold” to a perennially inflated fiat currency backed by nothing but government promises, which makes one ponder what could have happened to the dollar had Martin been an advocate of sound money dedicated to preserving the dollar’s link to gold. Instead, during his tenure the U.S. Gold Reserve declined by nearly one-half from 633.2 million ounces to 339.5 million ounces, while M3, the total quantity of dollar currency, soared more than three-fold from $190.0 billion to $616.1 billion.