Ancient Rome, the JFK assassination, 
and abandoning the gold standard

Rare is the person who’s not seen the footage of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963. 

But you’re more rare if you can name the man sitting directly in front of JFK in the limousine that day.

And rarer still if you know the pivotal role this man played in financial history. 

And if you’re not this rarer-than-rare person, then you will be in the next few minutes. 

Because I’m about to take you on a strange ride through financial history.

This is a story of governments, currency, gold, and an economic pattern that has repeated not just for centuries, but millennia. 

Let’s start with the lesser-known man in the limo that day in Dallas. 

“Our currency… your problem.” 

On November 22, 1963, John Connally, then Governor of Texas, survived one of the most notorious and controversial presidential assassinations in history. 

That’s him, sitting right in front of JFK:

The bullet that hit Connally was, according to some, a bullet that had struck the president first.

It could have been Connally’s end, too. 

But he survived and recovered from his wounds, and went on to find himself at another pivotal moment in 20th Century history just eight years after Dallas. 

Fast forward to 1971, and Connally was no longer Governor of Texas, but Treasury Secretary for President Richard Nixon. 

By this point, the world had been doing business in US Dollars for 27 years, since 1944, when forty four nations had signed the Bretton Woods Agreement. 

They’d done so on the understanding that the Dollar was convertible to gold. 

But by ‘71, the US had printed way more dollars than it had the gold to back.

European central banks had realized this. 

They’d begun redeeming their dollar reserves for gold bars. 

So President Nixon announced a ‘temporary’ suspension of gold convertibility. 

At the G10 meeting in Rome four months later, the European finance ministers confronted Connally.

They’d agreed to a gold standard. Now, their USD holdings were losing value rapidly, untethered to the precious metal. 

The ministers demanded the US get its house in order and stop, effectively, exporting inflation. 

Connally’s response?

“The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.”

America had shifted from co-operation to unilateralism. 

"Worth just as much tomorrow."

At 9pm Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, August 15, Nixon appeared on television from the Oval Office. 

The timing was deliberate. 

The markets around the world were closed. It was prime viewing time in America. 

The president announced (emphasis added): 

“I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the American dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States.”

He blamed “international money speculators” for holding the American dollar “hostage”. 

And he made two claims which have not aged well in the slightest.

“Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today. The effect of this action will be to stabilize the dollar.”

If you’ve spent any time on Fintwitter (X), you’ve probably seen the charts, like this one: 

It’s effectively a before/after of what’s come to be known as the ‘Nixon shock’. 

The dollar that the president proclaimed would stabilize and hold its value?

According to official inflation data, the US dollar has lost about 87% of its purchasing power.

What you could buy for $1.00 in 1971 costs about $7.85 now. 

And in gold terms? 

In 1971, $35 bought an ounce. 

At the time of writing, 55 years later, an ounce of gold trades for more than $5,000. 

So much for a ‘temporary’ measure to stabilize the dollar.

And so much for John Connally if he thought that the JFK assassination would be the only controversial historic flashpoint he’d be caught up in. 

What they sold to the public as an emergency measure to protect their currency, was in reality the only option they had to get themselves out of the liquidity crisis they’d created by printing more dollars than their gold reserves could back. 

But the more interesting thing about this event, in my opinion, is the fact that the Nixon Shock was not the first time a country had decoupled its currency from gold. 

In fact, this is a pattern which has been repeating for millennia. 

1933: When owning gold became illegal

Nixon was hardly blazing a trail when he ordered Treasurer Connally to suspend the dollar’s convertibility to gold. 

You could argue he was, in fact, following a very old script. 

Because governments have a standard playbook for dealing with liquidity crises. 

History proves this.

In 1933, for example, the US was in the grips of the Great Depression. 

The Federal Reserve wanted to print money to “stimulate” the economy.

But the gold standard stood in the way. So, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102.

The order made it illegal for US citizens to own monetary gold (coins, bullion, certificates).

The government forced citizens to sell their gold to the Federal Reserve for $20.67 an ounce.

Then, they revalued it to $35.00 an ounce.

That sequence of events, just to be clear:

It suddenly becomes illegal to keep your gold. So you sell to the government. They nearly double its value after the fact. And the paper money they ‘bought’ it with is suddenly worth 69% less. 

This solved the liquidity problem by effectively picking the public’s pockets. 

Again, though, this wasn’t anything new. 

1931: Britain stems the gold bleed

Two years earlier, on September 21, 1931, the Bank of England committed the original “rug pull”.

At the time, the Pound Sterling was the world’s undisputed reserve currency.

But the UK was bleeding gold. 

Just as foreign investors and central banks had grown eager to redeem their dollars for gold in the runup to 1971, they were doing the same to the English. 

Britain was facing the prospect of an empty gold vault, and the collapse of its own gold standard. 

So what do you think they did? 

They severed the link, of course. 

The Pound immediately collapsed by 25%, and today has lost more than 99% of its value against gold.

And just as in 1971, the government sold this to the public as a short-term workaround, rather than a permanent change. 

When Chancellor Philip Snowden introduced the bill to the House of Commons on September 21, 1931, he didn't call it a permanent default. He introduced it as “a Bill for the temporary Amendment of the Gold Standard Act, 1925” but with the convenient loophole:

'Unless and until His Majesty by Proclamation otherwise directs'. 

It fits the oldest rule in political economics (often attributed to Milton Friedman): 

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

Devaluation in our DNA?

If you really want to see the roots of this pattern, you have to go back much further.

The Roman Empire didn't have paper money to “delink” or central banks to “revalue”. 

But they had the same liquidity crisis: The state’s debts exceeded its ability to pay.

So, they invented the ancient version of Quantitative Easing: Coin Clipping.

Under Emperor Augustus (27 BC), the Denarius — the reserve currency of the ancient world — was roughly 95% pure silver.

By the time of the “Crisis of the Third Century” (around 270 AD), that same coin was less than 5% silver. 

It was essentially a bronze slug dipped in a silver wash.

The technology changes, but the mechanism remains the same:

When the bill comes due, and the vault is empty, the state chooses to dilute its currency rather than default on debt.

No magic bullets

So now you know about the man seated in front of JFK the day the president was assassinated. 

He wasn’t just caught up in one of the 20th Century’s defining political and cultural moments.

He was involved in arguably the most important monetary one. 

John Connally was the man who, under President Nixon, took the US Dollar off the gold standard, and made clear to America’s trading partners that she cared little for their objections. 

The story here might give you an interesting fact to drop the next time you find yourself talking about the JFK assassination. 

Because it’s arguably far more important than who the man on the grassy knoll might or might not have been. 

The history of governments decoupling their currencies from sound money, and of — in every case I’ve just shown you — triggering almost total collapse of purchasing power, goes back millennia. 

There is no magic bullet for redeeming a fiat currency from a liquidity crisis brought on by debt or reckless moneyprinting. 

Just an irrefutable litany of proof of the fact that no currency in history has ever held its value (let alone gained value) once its ‘gold standard’ has been killed. 

This week's quote:

"We cannot afford to be a nation that prints more than it earns, or promises more than it can back." — John F. Kennedy (paraphrased)

Invest in knowledge,

Thom
The Benchmark

Read last week's email: Why gold beat every other asset in 2025.

Share The Benchmark: If you've enjoyed reading, forward this email to someone you know would appreciate it. 

New here? Subscribe to The Benchmark here.