50 years away from the gold standard - Cannot go back but going forward cannot continue

Many often use the word "unprecedented" to describe market events, yet this word is often overused. However, 50 years ago, the US went off the gold standard on August 15, 1971. A half a century ago the great currency debasement began. $35 for an ounce will never occur again. Could a different path have been taken that ensured money being tied to gold? Unlikely, given the stresses on Bretton Woods. It was never really a workable system as the global economy moved away from the devastation of the second world war.  Perhaps Keynes and his idea of a supranational currency, bancor, would have bene better, but that would have just moved the world to a true fiat system sooner.  

Going forward, monetary stability of purchasing power was placed at best in the hands of bureaucrats and at worst with politicians that only looked for short-term solutions to knotty economic problems. Forget long-term stability and herald the age of economic expediency. Nothing of the debasement story should be a surprise. There will be periods of stable prices albeit rising, but biases have tilted away from the dominance of monetary stability to a full employment goal with the emphasis on inflation as a measure of economic slack. Unfortunately, global slack and excess savings has dominated the last two decades and checked any immediate painful consequences of great debasement.  

The view is that economic technocrats will be able to stop any major inflation debasement because they have to skill to control economies and politicians have the will to stop any debasement pain through shocking the real economy. The Bretton Woods and early floating exchange decades tell us that bureaucratic skill and political will are always in short supply. 

For investor, the vision for the future should accept that inflation tail risk will not be a distant threat but a specter for any portfolio. In the short run, the monetary economy can be controlled, but tail risk from debasement swans should be expected.  

It is worth listening to President Nixon spin this change in regime. (You can get it on youtube: Nixon speech on ending Bretton Woods.). What a twisted piece of rhetoric that sounds so wrong 50 years later.