FDR took us off the gold standard in the sense that you didn ' t have to give payment in gold anymore and all gold needed to be turned in to the banks because of the economic crisis . Everyone hoarded the gold so it didn ' t really do much . He also increased the rate that dollars were converted to gold to 35 $ an ounce to improve the Fed ' s balance sheets . Nixon got rid of the law that money could be converted to gold at a fixed amount . It had stayed at 35 $ an ounce since FDR . I happen to know that at the time , lot of foreign countries had our dollars and kept converting to our gold since they were weary of using the dollar . So Nixon ' s decision was more consequential in getting off the gold standard . d a y i n h i s t o r y f d r t a k e s u n itedstatesoffgoldstandard .