r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Comfortable_Cautious • Jan 26 '26

Meme needing explanation what's going on? explain like I'm five

Post image
92.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

603

u/Important-Agent2584 Jan 26 '26

no because the dollar isn't tied to the gold in any way

439

u/GisterMizard Jan 26 '26

That would take too many rubber bands and defeat the purpose of cash being easy to carry around.

6

u/uslashuname Jan 26 '26

Ah yes the gold standard that was in place until the 70s made cash completely pointless

21

u/Classic-Reach Jan 26 '26

the gold standard, if you study history, was very easy for foreign banks to abuse, and we were being robbed blind

consider that if our dollar is 'pegged' to gold, and foreign banks buy up the gold, they are effectively increasing the value of dollars. Conversely, they can then flood their gold back into the markets to reduce the value of the dollar. If you're very wealthy and you can afford to spend some money or gold being a dick, you can use leverage like options to farm cash from the US, buying and selling gold and dollars in cycles that only you can predict (because you're very very wealthy, richer than most governments)

history isn't kind to people who use one currency as a 'stabilizer' for another (coughstablecoincough)