London Gold Pool

The London Gold Pool was the pooling of Gold reserves by a group of eight central banks in the United States and seven European countries that agreed on 1 November 1961 to cooperate in maintaining the Bretton Woods System of fixed-rate convertible currencies and defending a gold price of  US$35 per troy ounce by interventions in the London Gold Market.
The central banks coordinated concerted methods of gold sales to balance spikes in the market price of gold as determined by the London morning Gold Fixing While buying gold on price weaknesses. The United states provided 50% of the required gold supply for sale. The price controls were successful for six years when the system became no longer workable because the pegged price of gold was too low, runs on gold, the British pound, and the US dollar occurred, and France decided to withdraw from the pool. The Pool collapsed in March 1968.
The London Gold Pool controls were followed with an effort to suppress the gold with a two-tier system of official exchange and open market transactions, but this gold window collapsed in 1971 with the Nixon Shock, and resulted in the onset of the gold bull market  which saw the price of  gold appreciate rapidly to US$850 in 1980.

Gold Price Regulation:.
In 1944, before conclusion of World War II, delegates from the 44 allied nations nations gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, tho reestablish and regulate the international financial system. The meeting resulted in the founding of the international Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and was followed by other post-war reconstruction efforts, such as establishing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The IMF was charged with the maintenance of a system of international currency exchange rates which became known as the Bretton Woods system.
Foreign exchange market rates were fixed, but were allowed adjustments when necessary and currencies were required to be convertible. For this purpose, all currencies had to be backed be either physical gold reserves, or a currency convertible into gold and United States dollar was recognized as the world's reserve currency as an anchor currency or the system. The price of one troy ounce of gold was pegged to US$35. There was still an open gold market. For the Brotton Woods system to remain effective, the fix of the dollar to gold would have to be adjustable, or the free market price of gold would have to be maintained near the $35 official foreign exchange price. The larger the gap know s the gold window between free market gold price and the foreign exchange rete, the more tempting it was for nations to deal eith internal economic crises by buying gold at the Bretton Woods price and selling it in the gold market.
The Bretton woods system was challenged by several crises. As the economic post-war upswing proceeded, international trade and foreign exchange reserve rose, while the gold supply increased only marginally. In the recessions of the 1950s, the US had to convert vast amounts of gold, and the Bretton Woods system suffered increasing break down due to US payment Imbalances.
After oil import quotas and restrictions on trade outflows were insufficient by 1960 targeted efforts began to maintain the Bretton Woods System and to enforce the US$35 per ounce gold valuation, Late in 1960, amidst of US election debates, panic buying of gold led to a surge in price to over US$40 per oz, causing agreements between the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England to stabilize the price by allocating for sale substantial gold supplies held by the bank of England. The United States sought means of ending the drain on its gold reserves.