“My efforts to prevent the closing of the gold window—working through Connolly, Volcker, and Shultz—do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be closed tomorrow because we now have a government that seems incapable, not only of constructive leadership, but of any action at all. What a tragedy for mankind!” Those are the words of Arthur Burns, who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978.
They come from Robert Ferrell’s 2010 book Inside the Nixon Administration: The Secret Diary of Arthur Burns, 1969-1974. Burns was passionately against President Nixon’s economically illiterate decision to devalue the dollar through severance of the dollar’s commodity definition. About this, history is clear. Supporting Ferrell's history, Allen J. Matusow’s 1998 book Nixon’s Economy, and Steven F. Hayward’s 2001 book The Age of Reagan both confirm the contents of Burns’s diaries: he worked eagerly, but ultimately unsuccessfully to save Nixon from a policy choice of inflation.
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