There have been permutations of the gold standard. Some like the idea of having 100% gold coverage for currency. Others prefer something similar to the classical gold standard of the late 19th century, which was different from the bimetallic (a combination of gold and silver) systems that preceded it. With the gold-exchange standard of the 1920s and early 1930s countries could use the U.S. dollar and the British pound–both tied to gold–as well as gold itself, as reserves to back their currencies. Under the Bretton Woods monetary system, which emerged from World War II, all currencies were fixed to the dollar, and only the dollar could be converted to gold. Bretton Woods was another type of gold-exchange standard.
All of these previous standards collapsed, either because of war or because the systems’ rules weren’t adhered to.
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