How the ‘Nixon shock’ reshaped our economy

The dotcom bubble. The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The oil price spiral of the 1970s. The launch of the single currency. It would be fun, in a nerdish kind of a way, to debate which was the most seismic economic event of postwar history. But in fact the answer would be this: the ‘Nixon shock’, a fateful day when the final link between gold and the money you carry around in your pocket, or on your bank card, was finally severed. And it happened 50 years ago this week.

A half-century on — enough time for some historical perspective — how’s it going? Well, since then we have seen a couple of rounds of hyper-inflation, and may be heading into another; a couple of spectacular asset bubbles; the worst financial crisis the world has ever known; the lowest interest rates since records began; and debt exploding on a scale that would once have been unimaginable.