The US dollar is a fiat paper currency.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
What would count as true or false
Judge as of September 2017. True: the US dollar is a fiat currency (not convertible into gold or any commodity since 1971) and is issued as paper notes, among other forms. Mostly true: fiat is correct, but 'paper' is loose because most dollars exist as electronic deposits. False: the dollar was backed by or convertible into a commodity at that time.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 Is U.S. currency still backed by gold? Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System · 2 August 2013
“Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver, or any other commodity.”
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E2 Nixon Ends Convertibility of U.S. Dollars to Gold and Announces Wage/Price Controls Federal Reserve History (federalreservehistory.org) · 4 August 2011
“The first order was for the gold window to be closed. Foreign governments could no longer exchange their dollars for gold; in effect, the international monetary system turned into a fiat one.”
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E3 Modern Money Mechanics/Introduction - Wikisource, the free online library Wikisource
“In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities.”
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E4 Modern Money Mechanics/Introduction - Wikisource, the free online library Wikisource
“About 69 percent, or $623 billion, of the $898 billion total stock in December 1991, was in the form of transaction deposits, of which $290 billion were demand and $333 billion were other checkable deposits.”
Reasoning
The Federal Reserve says its notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity (E1). The closing of the gold window ended dollar convertibility, and the monetary system "turned into a fiat one" (E2). A Wikisource transcription of "Modern Money Mechanics" says US paper currency has no value as a commodity (E3). These sources show the dollar was a fiat currency issued partly as paper Federal Reserve notes, which meets the "true" criterion. E4 shows most of the money stock was held as deposits, but its figures are from 1991, not 2017, so it does not settle the "mostly true" condition about the 2017 share.
Cite this claim
Ray Dalio, “The US dollar is a fiat paper currency.” (said 12 September 2017). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_394e089d23d6, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_394e089d23d6
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Ray Dalio
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Mostly false
“That has been true through all history.”
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Mostly true
“So when we look at history, we see that in all such periods, all the fiat currencies go down, okay?”
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Mostly true
“It takes in about $5 trillion, so it spends 40% more than it takes in.”
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Mostly true
“you could still have financial problems, like the breakdown of the monetary system in 1971, okay?”
The monetary system broke down in 1971 while the United States was still a dominant power.
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Resolved true
“one-third of our debt is held by foreigners, so that’s a different thing.”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.