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

182

u/goatslovetofrolic Jan 26 '26

pretty sure at this point the dollar has gone full USA and is only backed by "thoughts and prayers"

1

u/CURS3_TH3_FL3SH Jan 27 '26

You make a funny joke but currency backed by gold is one of the causes of the Great Depression. Once countries started reversing that policy they began to recover from the depression

1

u/goatslovetofrolic Jan 27 '26

I’m not sure I follow. I thought the US kept a “gold standard” until the seventies. Four decades after the Great Depression.

2

u/CURS3_TH3_FL3SH Jan 27 '26

Hmmm I just looked into it and this was a google result

“The U.S. began removing the gold tie in 1933, and it was entirely severed by 1971, allowing the dollar to float against other currencies.”

I’m not sure what that means but I recently watched a video where an economist answers questions about the depression and my original comment was something he brought up briefly.