Mark Moss traces how the Federal Reserve and IRS, established in 1913, enabled a shift from gold-backed to paper currency. In 1933, the government outlawed private gold ownership and revalued gold from $20 to $35 per ounce, which Moss argues stripped Americans of more than half their purchasing power overnight.
1913, we had the creation of the Federal Reserve and the IRS at the same time. So the Federal Reserve is going to create these artificial paper dollars that we're supposed to use as money. But why would anybody want to use that as money? Because we use gold as money. I got a good idea. We'll also create the IRS at the same time. So what we're going to do is make you go around for a year collecting these paper dollars and send them back to us. And the problem was, is that in order for this to work, I had to put my gold in the bank and they would give me the dollars back, and then we'd exchange dollars. Now what happened is in 1933, they made it where you're no longer allowed to own gold. But don't worry, we're going to cash you out. So we're going to give you the money for the gold, but we're not going to give you the $20 per ounce. We're going to revalue gold. So now gold became $35 an ounce, which means you lost over half of your purchasing power overnight. So it wasn't bad enough that we lost the gold. Now we're stuck on this fake paper money system, but at the same time, they took half of my purchasing power away from me as well.
