ABSTRACT
It was the dollar‧s turn to come under attack after the sterling devaluation in November 1967. Now, anticipating a possible dollar devaluation (a rise in the official price of gold), there was massive buying of gold in the private gold market. The Gold Pool (minus France who had withdrawn in June 1967) accommodated this demand from official gold stocks. 1 This crisis reached a head in March 1968 when the Gold Pool finally decided to withdraw support. In the meantime, the crisis had proved costly to the monetary authorities in terms of gold losses. Altogether, in the six months from the end of September 1967 to the end of March 1968, these losses mounted to about $3.5 billion of which the US share was about $2.4 billion (nearly 20 per cent of her gold reserves at the end of September 1967).
