Many think that the rise in the Gold Price Per Ounce from 1979 to 1980 was a classic reaction to high interest rates and high inflation during the last stages of Jimmy Carter's presidential term. There are still many reasons to be concerned about both countries, but they don't feature much in golden stories. Roosevelt banned the circulation of gold coins, although gold was still used to define the value of the dollar. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the revolution in Iran were often cited in stories about Gold Price Per Ounce in 1980. As the Industrial Revolution spread, other countries followed suit, and by the end of the 19th century, most industrialized nations were following the gold standard.
The government began to sell some of its shares in the open market and in 1978, along with most other countries, officially abandoned the gold standard. Despite dramatic increases in gold prices, the metal is among the three best bets for making money in commodity markets over the next six months. In 1914, the restriction on gold exports at the outbreak of the First World War forced the use of inconvertible paper money. Gold is dispersed throughout the Earth's crust and has since ancient times been valued both for its scarcity and for its metallurgical properties.
Here's some research I did to explore what caused gold prices to rise (and then) fall so dramatically in the first 3 months of 1980. Starting in Britain in 1821, monetary units were exchangeable for a fixed amount of gold, a change that Britain expected would stabilize its rapidly growing economy. After the war, the gold standard returned, but economic growth in the 1920s surpassed gold reserves, and some countries supplemented their reserves with stable currencies such as the pound and the dollar, which, like gold, had acquired in people's minds a permanent measure of abstract value. Before the 19th century, most nations maintained a bimetallic monetary system, which often included gold but consisted mainly of silver.
In the United States and many other countries, currencies remained “linked to gold” until the 1970s, when the decline in global reserves marked the gold standard's last death sentence. Gold for dollars held by foreigners, then, in 1974, it lifted its four-decade ban on the private purchase of gold.
