Journalism thrives on simple narratives and round numbers. So I must note that what President Nixon ended 50 years ago was not the international gold standard, which persisted despite interruptions for more than two millennia to 1914, but its complicated parody: the gold-exchange standard, established 99, not 50, years ago by a 1922 agreement at Genoa.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George convened the Genoa Conference in an effort to restore the economies of Central and Eastern Europe, modify the schedule of German reparations owed to France, and begin the re-integration of Soviet Russia into the European economy. Lacking any American support, the conference was a failure on all those counts.

The gold-exchange standard, John Maynard Keynes’ idea, was Genoa’s one tangible result. Keynes had proposed in 1913 that the monetary system of British colonial India be adopted world-wide. The British pound would remain convertible into gold, but India’s and other countries’ domestic payments would be backed by ostensibly gold-convertible claims on London. Following Genoa, the pound could be exchanged for gold, and other national currencies could be exchanged for pounds.

But there was a complication: unlike most currencies, the Indian rupee actually was based on silver, not gold, and British officials, including Keynes, overvalued the silver rupee, hoping to reduce heavy demands for British gold. British monetary experts inserted this scheme (without the silver wrinkle) in the 1922 Genoa accord, incidentally forestalling impecunious Britain’s repayment of its World War I debts in gold.

While working 35 years ago for Congressman Jack Kemp, I first coined the term the “reserve currency curse.” I was tutored in the subject by Lewis E, Lehrman, who in turn was influenced by the French economist Jacques Rueff (1896-1978). Keynes had claimed that what matters is only the value, not kind, of monetary reserves. It was Rueff who countered in 1932 that foreign exchange is qualitatively different from an equal value of precious metal.

With the creation of, say, dollar reserves, purchasing power “has simply been duplicated, and thus the American market is in a position to buy in Europe, and in the United States, at the same time.” This credit duplication causes prices to rise faster in the reserve-currency country than its trading partners, precipitating the reserve-currency country’s deindustrialization. That fate soon befell Great Britain, then the United States after the dollar replaced the pound under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement.

Other countries backing their currencies with dollar-denominated securities led to a dilemma for America. The United States is the only major country with negative net monetary reserves (foreign official assets minus liabilities). All others — even those whose currencies are used by foreign central banks — have positive net reserves (i.e., those countries’ foreign official assets exceed their foreign official liabilities).

There is a correlation of more than 90% between America’s net reserves and its manufacturing employment. American net reserves had been positive before but turned negative by 1960, and manufacturing jobs have since disappeared in direct proportion to the decline in our net reserves. Focusing on one bilateral trade balance or other — say, the US and China — is a mug’s game. What matters is the total balance, not bilateral subsets.

How could an American president reverse the reserve-currency curse? By making honesty the best policy: negotiating and starting repayment of all outstanding dollar reserves over several decades. Since international payments must be settled in real goods — not IOUs — the necessary production of American goods for export is the surest way to revive America’s manufacturing employment.

To increase our manufacturing jobs back to the peak of 17 million from today’s 12 million, it would be necessary to repay most outstanding official dollar reserves. If President Biden is as ineffectual as most of his recent predecessors in responding to the “reserve-currency curse,” he, too, will have to get used to the title “ex-President.”

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Mr. Mueller is the Lehrman Institute Fellow in Economics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC and author of “Redeeming Economics.” Image: Conferees at the Genoa Conference, with Prime Minister Lloyd George of Britain front and center. Detail of a British Government photo, via Wikipedia Commons.