Nixon

>>your mortgage and the govt. debt aren't at all the same thing"

They are both borrowed money. The only difference is that a mortgage is borrowed from one source and US debt is borrowed from a multiple of sources.

Your wikipedia entry supports my argument. Government overspending on wars, etc, forced the government to end convertibility of dollars into gold for foreign holders. It was the government's long prior history of spending beyond taxation that inflated the supply of dollars *in advance of* Nixon closing the gold window.

Nixon did not close the gold window, and then debt-backed spending followed. You have it backwards. Debt-backed spending preceded the closing of gold window, and forced it to be closed.