ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

London Gold Pool

Okay kiddo, let me explain the London Gold Pool to you.

Back in the 1960s, many countries around the world were using gold as a standard for their currency. The United States, for example, was using the gold standard to determine the value of its dollar.

But some countries, like France, were buying a lot of gold and this was causing a problem. The more gold they bought, the more the price of gold went up. This made it expensive for countries like the United States to buy gold, and therefore, it was becoming difficult for them to maintain the gold standard.

Enter the London Gold Pool. This was a group of central banks from around the world that came together to try and control the price of gold. They agreed to sell gold if the price started to go up too much, which would hopefully stop the price from rising.

But the London Gold Pool didn't last very long. It became too expensive for countries to keep selling gold, and eventually, the price of gold went up anyway. This caused countries like France to start redeeming their dollars for gold, which put pressure on the United States to maintain the gold standard.

In the end, the London Gold Pool failed and the gold standard eventually became less important as countries began to use other methods to determine the value of their currencies.