Comment Re:Not sympathetic. (Score 1) 825
That NPR article is pretty outrageous. He writes that everyone tried to get their gold at the same time and there wasn't enough to go around, therefore the British government decided to stop giving out gold altogether!
What I see here is criminal fraud, perpetuated by the government. The paper bills were supposed to have been claim slips for gold, with a government *promise* that if they ever wanted to claim the gold, it would be there. The government of Britain clearly broke its promise, as there wasn't enough gold to cover all the claim slips that had been issued. Rather than own up to this mistake and make reforms to avoid this in the future, they abandoned the gold standard to make it easier to perpetuate such fraud in the future.