The US closed the gold window not because they ran out of gold, but because it was propping up Britain's crappy currency. So people were buying pounds and then converting to USD and then subsequently to Gold via a loophole in the British system. Instead of opening the window again, though, Nixon left it shut, and no other president reopened it, meaning the US was free to float its currency against gold. Since there was still this huge demand for USD, it slowly replaced the British pound as the world's reserve currency. Over time, politicians used the status of being the world's reserve currency to go deeper into debt. As long as the rest of the world needed USD to buy their oil, agriculture, and other products, it was still in need. But recently that has been changing, and the world doesn't need the dollar anymore. But the US is still spending as if the world does, and the latest agreement by politicians to cut back on spending isn't enough to remedy the situation.
I can't tell you much about what is going to happen in the future, but I can tell you this: If anyone says "Oh, the US always bounces back, just you wait and see..." then you need to ignore what that person has to say. The US is become less and less free economically, there are a myriad of local, state, and federal regulations that hamper small businesses from thriving, in fact, increasingly the larger corporations use regulatory capture and iron triangle politics to keep competition out of their respective industries. I could go on, but I think I've put enough information in this message you guys can wiki most of the stuff you don't already know. It's pretty easy to see what is happening right now if you take the time to learn it all.
There were issues with the pound but the USA was running out of gold. You just have to check the decreasing level of gold reserves through the 50's and 60's. And how at different times during that period the USA was unable to keep the dollar pegged to $40/oz, and the price shut up to almost $50. Then you have the deal with the rest of the world to stabilize the price of gold and latter on the fight with South Africa, until the USA gov could not find more tricks and was forced to default, breaking the gold conversion.
Btw, the relation between the USA central bank, the Fed, and the pound go way beyond the 70's. In the 20's they were already playing along.
