Episode 84: "Three Days at Camp David"

In William Greider's mammoth book Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, he writes:

"If historians searched for the precise date on which America’s singular dominance of the world’s economy ended, they might settle on August 15, 1971. On that day, President Nixon abruptly changed the monetary rules under which nations had traded with one another for twenty-five years. From World War II onward, the United States was the wealthiest, most productive and most stable of the competing economies in the world. Its currency, the dollar, was the guarantee for everyone of order and stability in international trade and finance. President Nixon’s announcement, without saying so explicitly, meant the dollar was now too weak to lead."

In Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy Jeffrey Garten details the three-day meeting that removed the US dollar from the gold standard. If you caught my "Crossover Episode: 'Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve'" you may remember we learned that, by 1981, $1 was worth about 45 cents. In Spring of 2024, a Swiss banker warned that the US dollar had lost 99% of its value.

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Days-Camp-David-Transformed/dp/006288767X

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/14944551

https://www.blackstone.com/


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Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY

Sara Causey discusses Jeffrey E. Garten's book "Three Days at Camp David," which explores a 1971 meeting that transformed the global economy. Garten, a former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, details how President Nixon's decision to decouple the U.S. dollar from gold altered international trade and finance. The book critiques Nixon's actions, arguing they led to inflation, neglected American competitiveness, and lacked a long-term strategy. Causey highlights the historical context, including the Bretton Woods Agreement and the IMF's role, and questions the broader implications of the U.S. abandoning the gold standard.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Camp David, Jeffrey Garten, global economy, Nixon administration, gold standard, Bretton Woods, IMF, inflation, dollar devaluation, Federal Reserve, economic policy, international trade, financial stability, economic opportunity, global financial crisis.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about Jeffrey Garten's book three days at Camp David, how a secret meeting in 1971 transformed the global economy. Seems like, over the years, we've had more than a few of these little secret meetings of power brokers to transform the world's economy. Right? Gives me a headache. Sometimes even think about it, we go to the back flap of the hardback copy that I have from the local library. Shout out to them. We learned that Jeffrey E Garten is Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Management, where he teaches courses on the global economy. Formerly, he was under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration and a managing director of the Blackstone Group. If for some reason you're not familiar, Blackstone is a gargantuan investment company. They are well heeled in terms of having fat cats and power brokers by their own description. Blackstone is the world's largest alternative asset manager with more than $1 trillion in assets under management, not small potatoes. So let's take a deep dive here. Let's take a look at what happened during these three days at Camp David, when old tricky Dicky, who, for whatever reason, is starting to be reinvented as some kind of strange folk hero. I don't really get that. I've heard Alex talk about him, like, oh yeah, he was an honest man. I mean, he really got the shaft on the whole Watergate thing. I'm like, Well, okay, even if we assume that Watergate was a setup, which needs to be its own separate episode or set of episodes, even if he was totally set up and had nothing to do with that, it was just a means of scooting him out of the office without having to pop. Pop. Does that mean everything he did was great? I don't fucking think so. So pick out your frosty beverage of choice, and we will take a look at these three days at camp. David in the introduction garden does a pretty good job of teeing up the book. He talks about how he will tell us what happened over the three days, what happened in the aftermath, what it all means. Why was the United States rethinking its role in the world? Why could it no longer shoulder the burdens that it faced after the Second World War? And then also, what were the issues around the relationship of the US dollar to gold? As he writes, our currency is also a major influence on what we care so passionately about at home, including such issues as jobs, prices, retirement security, financial stability, economic opportunity and even respect in the world. End Quote, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It touches a great many things. That's why, whenever I have posted about things like dollar devaluation, how the dollar has lost so much of its value, and some mansplainer will be like, No, I don't believe that. Or they'll laugh, react. I'm like, the only person you're hurting is yourself. You're not hurting my feelings. I don't give a shit. What you think. I can look around through, you know, basic powers of observation and tell that $1 doesn't go anywhere near as far as it did even when I was a kid. I'm still in my 40s. I remember being able to take $1 into a store in the 80s, and you could actually walk out with multiple items now, I mean, you might be able to get maybe one of those little tiny packages of bubble gum, you know, the kind that has like only two or three sticks in it. He goes over some basic details about the Bretton Woods Agreement and how the US agreed to value one ounce of gold to $35 and then every other currency would be valued at a fixed rate to the dollar. And so because it was a fixed point, the dollar would not be devalued. I would also argue that because it was tied to something real, ie gold, and not fiat currency that's backed by nothing, that was also an area of stability. He also talks about the establishment of the IMF, aka the International Monetary Fund. If you did not catch my episode about how the IMF exploits developing nations, I will drop a link to that in the write up for this episode. It is definitely. Something that you should check out, we're told on page eight of the introduction. In fact, the dollar gold Link was enthusiastically supported time and again in public statements by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, both leaders saw a strong, stable greenback as one critical element of America's leadership in the free world. On Thursday, July 18, 1963 JFK told Congress, I want to make it clear that this nation will maintain the dollar as good as gold, freely interchangeable with gold at $35 an ounce, the foundation stone of the free world's trade and payments position. End. Quote, I'm not really sure if that's supposed to be viewed by us as a negative thing. I certainly don't see it as such. So if we glance over to page nine, we will see the eye. But there's the rub moment, well before the Camp David meeting. However, it had become clear to Americans and foreigners alike that the United States had nowhere near enough gold reserves to make good on its commitments. Uncle Sam had been flooding the world with dollars through the Marshall Plan, through other foreign aid programs, through its financing of US troops and bases abroad, and through the growing foreign investments of US multinational companies. But all the while, the supply of gold was not increasing at nearly the same rate as the dollar outflow. And even when gold supplies were expanding, Europe and Japan were accumulating their share of it, leaving less for the United States. End quote, I'm still in the introduction. I'm on page 11. On that Sunday, August 15, 1971 Nixon was not just announcing a change in monetary policy. He was in essence telling the world that the near omnipotent role that the United States had played since the war was over. End quote.

This is one of those things that

let me, let me think about how I want to say this.

This is the type of thing that I put in the category of verbal gymnastics or elastic language, because when you think about, okay, the near omnipotent role of the United States is over automatically. For me, I think of anti imperialism. I think, well, we don't need to be the world's policeman. We don't need to be conquering. We don't need to have our finger in every pie. We need to be able to leave people to hell alone, to support their independence and their self determination, and then allow them to self determine, get get the hell out of the way. So I feel like this is positioned in such a way as to tell us what happened was actually a good thing, because it was this anti imperialist, anti America as a policeman type thing. But what it's not taking into account, what, in my opinion, is being papered over, is the reality that now your dollar is not worth shit. The purchasing power has gone way, way down. I mean, we had a Swiss banker telling us in 2024 that the dollar had lost 99% of its power. And I remember having a dude laugh react at that on social media, because he just couldn't believe that that was true. And I thought, my guy, you're going to be the very one that's not laughing during a collapse, during a meltdown, when all of your dollars have suddenly become CBDCs and you're being tracked with a social credit score. Are you going to be laughing then? Just saying, so I think we have to be careful with the way that some of this is being positioned. I'm still in the introduction. I'm now on the bottom of page 12. In the early 1970s the Federal Reserve was under an intense public spotlight as it struggled to deal with the new economic conditions. On that score, nothing has changed then as now, Vietnam then Afghanistan today, a long war was ending without any semblance of American victory, and was sapping the country's appetite for military involvement overseas. End, quote, well, by the time this hits the air, who knows what further entanglements we will have gotten ourselves into as I sit and record this episode, there's still the mess going on between Ukraine and Russia. There's still turmoil in Gaza. There are some bumps and bruises happening in Africa. There are some things going on between China and Taiwan that could erupt at any point in time, yeah, then, as in, now, we get these long wars that just go on and on with no real Victor, and then also a large number of people asking the question, Why were we there in the first place? At the end of the introduction, just as I have done in the write up for this podcast episode, he quotes from William greider's mammoth tome on the Federal Reserve, which is. Titled secrets of the temple, how the Federal Reserve runs the country that I mean saying it needs to be its own episode is an understatement. I might have to just do on an as I can manage it basis, a series of episodes like I did for the men who killed Kennedy Docu series where I just go point by point. I really need to do something like that for secrets of the temple, it is a massive, massive book. It's about like a Holy Bible, and all of the things that he uncovers. I mean, Wow, just wow. But there's a passage from Secrets of the temple where he says, If historians search for the precise date on which America's singular dominance of the world's economy ended. They might settle on August 15, 1971 on that day, President Nixon abruptly changed the monetary rules under which nations had traded with one another for 25 years from World War Two onward, the United States was the wealthiest, most productive and most stable of the competing economies in the world. Its currency, the dollar was the guarantee for everyone of order and stability in international trade and finance. President Nixon's announcement, without saying so explicitly, meant the dollar was now too weak to lead. End quote, I think Grider pegs it a little bit better. And that's just my opinion. Okay, and it could be wrong. Just, I'm just reviewing this book. I'm just giving you my opinion. I feel like garden is still trying to, well, we couldn't shoulder all the burdens. Things needed to be more global. He's, I can feel like, in some respect, he's trying to put a positive spin on something that doesn't need a positive spin. Where I feel like, what Grider has said there is more accurate. We were starting to go down the shitter. You want me to be blunt. You want me to be country about it. We were in the shits. In the first chapter, he talks briefly and generally about Nixon, and he talks about how in 1968 there was a lot of turmoil. People were protesting the Vietnam War. There were riots, there was student activism. MLK was murdered. RFK was murdered. And here's an interesting note in this first chapter where I was like, Holy shit, I've got to talk about this. Warren Christopher, who had stepped down as Deputy Attorney General for LBJ, came to the White House to see his old classmate from Stanford Law School, John Ehrlichman, who had just been appointed as a senior aide to the new president. Christopher handed Ehrlichman a package of documents. They were proclamations to be filled in. Ehrlichman told Nixon biographer Richard Reeves, you could fill in the name of the city and the date and the President would sign it and declare martial law. I'm long pausing on purpose you haven't lost the broadcast. What the fuck you could just bring in a paper and fill in whatever date and name of the city, and the President would sign it automatically and make a declaration of martial law. Wow. I sort of feel like the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a theory I'd like to talk about at some point that says that time is not linear and the cycles of history are not linear. We're not really moving in a linear progression the way that we think we are, but rather that time itself moves in cycles. And I think there might be some credence to that, because when we look at the Wheel of the Year, for example, spring, summer, autumn, winter, and back again, the light half of the year, the dark half of the year, the seasons, the growing season, there's a time to put the garden to bed. There's a time to till the soil and put in your amendments that are going to rest there over the winter, and then there's a time to till the soil and plant your seeds and watch those plants grow and water them and nurture them, and then collect your fruits, eat what you want to eat, and then dry or can or preserve the things that you want to have over the winter. So I do think it's an interesting concept, this idea that maybe time is not in a line, the way that we think, maybe history itself is not in a line, maybe these things just go in cycles. I definitely wonder when I see something like that, the President would just sign it and declare martial law. When we think about lockdowns and shutdowns and only God knows what will have happened with the election by the time that this hits the airwaves? Only God knows what kind of situation we'll be in. But I'm just like, This feels like something that could happen today. This feels very current to me, yet we're talking about 1968 in chapter two, which is called the economic crisis. He does. Is a good like Cliff Notes version of explaining inflation. I'm on page 27 the concept of inflation is critical to this story. Inflation meant that prices would be constantly rising, and that $1 in the future would be able to purchase fewer products and services than it had been able to buy before the inflation began. I mean, I sort of feel like this is a no duh moment. That's why, when the guy laugh reacted about the value of the dollar being so piss poor at this point. I'm like, what part of that is difficult for you to understand? Do you not have a brain? I mean, sort of like Simon Cowell, I don't mean to be rude, but are you fucking idiot, every year, the rising cost of a quart of milk, an automobile, a visit to the doctor or college tuition would outstrip the rise in salaries and wages for most people. At the same time, the value of people's savings would erode, because inflation would diminish what they could actually earn on money they had put away for, say, their retirement. Thus, if the interest rate for a savings account was 6% and the rate of inflation was 5% then savers would actually only earn 1% per annum. So here you go. You have somebody that's in cahoots with Blackstone telling you the truth. So if it seems like you've got a sexy Hisa, a high yield savings account, and you're like, Man, this money, this these interest rates. If the Fed keeps jacking them up, that's totally fine, because look at my savings. But what he's telling you is, is the real truth there? If the rate of inflation is 5% and your savings account is 6% then you're actually only earning 1% on that money. Think about the trickery that's built into our finance system. I'm going to skip down in that same section just a bit. The prevailing theory among economists was that by raising interest rates or tightening the budget, the resulting slowdown in growth would reduce workers demand for higher wages and also reduce the need for companies to raise their prices, both of which would translate into lower inflation. The big risk was that an engineering of slower growth could inadvertently go too far and push the country into a recession. Nixon's nightmare was that his administration would do just that. End quote. Garten quotes Newsweek from early 1971 saying, if there is not a sustained pickup in the months ahead, the economy could turn out to be Nixon's Vietnam. He also quote Nick quotes Nixon himself from his own memoirs, saying, I might not even be nominated for re election in 1972 in the chapter titled a run on the dollar, Garten writes, In the mid 1960s financial officials thought One solution might be to create an alternative to the dollar. The idea was to allow the IMF to issue its own currency called a special drawing, right, or SDR. Eventually, they thought the SDR would take over from the dollar, or at least reduce the burden on the greenback. The SDR was also expected to be a potential substitute for gold for various reasons, though, the IMF currency did not succeed as its creators had hoped. In the end, there seemed to be no substitute for the dollar. The world had become too dependent on using it for trade, investment, financial reserves and pure accounting purposes. End Quote, definitely would advise you to check out that episode that I recorded about the IMF and how it exploits developing nations, because Cheryl payer talks about those SDRs. And in reading that, I immediately thought of this connection between SDRs and CBDCs. I'm like, could that have been a sort of early pilot program, an early idea of, how do we get rid of the dollar? Well, we could have these SDRs. I mean, it didn't go their way at that point in time. But, I mean, we all know that digital money is the way of the future. There's no doubt about that. Also in this chapter, a run on the dollar, we learn an interesting story. Garten writes on May 12, New York Senator Jacob Javits, a centrist Republican and a key voice on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, proclaimed on the Senate floor that the US pledge to exchange dollars presented by central banks for gold was obsolete. He suggested that Treasury stop sales of gold altogether, and he called for a world monetary conference to create a new monetary system in which the dollar would not be tied to gold. Many foreign officials, as well as traders and investors around the world, wondered if Javits was sending up a trial balloon for the Nixon administration, although the US Treasury vehemently denied that this was the case. The fact was that foreign officials and the world's investors and traders looked to the United States to assume leadership in a crisis. This could have taken the form of calling a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors to decide on a coordinated means to quell concerns over currency gyrations. At a minimum, the US Treasury Secretary could have made a statement that Washington was confident that any problems could and would. Be handled. But Washington said nothing, and a general fear arose that this benign neglect could be a precursor to America's abandoning the dollar gold link and with it the stable linchpin of the entire monetary system. End quote. Here in the near future, I'm going to record an episode about an old 1941 film by Frank Capra called Meet John Doe. I had not heard of it before. I heard Oliver Stone talking about it in general terms in a documentary that he did. And I was like, gosh, I've never even seen that movie. And when I was reading this passage about Jacob Javits, maybe he was like a trial balloon for the administration to start talking about this on the Senate floor, like, let's put it out here and see what happens with it when, when he's talking about it. First, I thought of that movie. In that film, Gary Cooper's character John is unknowingly being used by higher powers in order to create an audience and to create some sympathy and to create a movement that they will then hijack and use for their own purposes. So I was just like, Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Javits probably was a sort of trial balloon. We're gonna send him out first and gage public opinion and see what happens by having him suggest it for us. Garden dedicates a few chapters to particularly key players of the weekend, one of whom is John Connolly, which is rather interesting. It's like, okay, why is a Democrat in a Republican administration, as a Treasury Secretary like you have this chumsy relationship between Connolly and LBJ, then you wind up also with a chumsy relationship between Connolly and Nixon. I mean, for one thing, that should tell you that the whole red versus blue, donkey versus elephant charade is exactly that. It's just a fucking play, but it's like, how did these two fit together? I mean, this is awfully odd in in his chapter on John Connolly Jr, Garten writes, the President did not know Connolly personally, but he knew of him and admired him as an experienced, ruthless politician. Connolly had been at the right hand of Lyndon Johnson from the early days of LBJ political career as chief aide for Johnson's election to the House and Senate in the 1940s and as the political operative behind his elevation to Vice President in 1960 and to President in 1964 in 1962 Connolly had been elected Governor of Texas, eventually serving for three terms. He rode with JFK and was wounded in the fateful motorcade in Dallas in 1963 he also helped deliver Texas for Hubert Humphrey, who ran against Nixon in 1968 a feat Nixon had not forgotten. The President also knew that the former governor was a conservative southern Democrat. Connolly had enthusiastically supported America's war in Vietnam. Let me say that again, the President also knew that the former governor was a conservative southern Democrat. Conley had enthusiastically supported America's war in Vietnam. So, you know, not to get too wide of the mark on what happened at Camp David and Nixon taking us off the gold standard and all that. But I just have to say, you know, as someone very interested in the life and times and the murder of JFK, I just find it kind of weird here. I'm just saying you have somebody that was in the motorcade that day that was described as a conservative southern Democrat and who enthusiastically supported the war in Vietnam, seems to be kind of an awfully weird bedfellow for the motorcade, doesn't it?

Hmm, just strikes me a little bit odd. We also in this chapter on Connolly. Learn this another aspect of Connolly's experience impressed Nixon too, as chief lobbyist for Texas billionaire Sid Richardson throughout most of the 1950s Connolly immersed himself in the Texas universe of magnets who won, lost and won again gargantuan fortunes in oil and gas. For nearly a decade, he developed strong ties to the oil and gas industry, famous for its ability to manipulate politicians at all levels. Connolly was often considered the strategic and operational behind the scenes mastermind looking after the fortunes of Richardson and other Texas billionaires. Hmm, yet again, this seems like an awfully strange bet fellow for JFK ties to Texas billionaires, an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War. Hmm, it's becoming less surprising to me that he wound up being in cahoots with LBJ and Nixon, but I don't know, man, I'm just kind of finding that to be a little bit suspicious. We also read he was an exceptionally tough opponent and negotiator. It's not enough for Conley to beat you, said a congressman from the state legislature who was an ally of the governor while the two held office, he's got to rub your nose in the dirt. Early on as Treasury Secretary, Conley startled Henry Kissinger, no amateur in fighter himself, when he told him, You will be measured in this town by the enemies you destroy, the bigger they are, the bigger you will be. That's fucking creepy. Kissinger needs to be his own episode or sets of episode, the different things that bastard did. But wow, the enemies you destroy, the bigger they are, the bigger you will be. Well, okay, again, I'm not trying to go too far afield from our topic at hand, but there were a lot of careers that somehow intersected with the murder of JFK, presidents, future presidents, people that got a lot of benefit after Kennedy was moved out of the way. Here's another interesting tidbit in this. He's still talking about Connolly. He sought out retired Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin for hours of tutoring. He did the same with John Petty, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, who had had extensive experience in international banking at Chase Manhattan Bank before entering government. So there's yet another intersection of corporate America, Wall Street and the government. There's really a revolving door between all of those institutions. Oh yeah. And speaking of which, in the chapter that Garten devotes to Paul Volcker, we learn from 1965 to 1969 Volcker ran Chase Manhattan banks forward planning, working closely with the chairman, David Rockefeller, among America's most prominent international business leaders. End Quote, another intersection between corporate America, Wall Street and the government. Also very interesting. I wrote some blog posts last year about Kennedy's enemies, one of whom was David Rockefeller. Those two were definitely not BFFs. So I just, I keep finding these intersections to be awfully interesting. Continuing in the chapter about Volcker, Garten quotes Volcker as saying, We give government the right to print money because we trust elected officials not to abuse that right, not to debase that currency by inflating. Foreigners hold our dollars because they trust our pledge that these dollars are equivalent to gold and Trust is everything. End Quote, yeah, I don't trust them not to abuse that right. I don't trust them not to debase the currency. That's really all they've done ever since in 1969 Volcker creates a report for the administration. A few bullet points here. The international monetary system is under great strain. The US cannot make good on its commitment to exchange gold for dollars at the fixed price of $35 per ounce, the risk exists that Bretton Woods could break down if everyone wanted gold, especially like if they all wanted it at the same time, and there was a run foreign governments are concerned that the United States cannot get its balance of payments under control. The policies that Washington follows now will be central to its domestic and foreign policies. Nothing is more urgent than the US getting its inflation under control. In the chapter on Arthur burns, we learn that Nixon attributed his loss to Kennedy to the economy. In this we read in November 1960 when Nixon was running for president against John F Kennedy, Byrnes warned Nixon that a national economic slowdown was in store and that it could jeopardize his election prospects. Byrnes suggested that Nixon press the Eisenhower administration to stimulate the economy immediately, Nixon tried but failed to persuade his colleagues to lean on the Fed to lower interest rates or to accelerate federal spending. Burns' prediction of a recession came true, and Nixon was convinced that he lost to JFK because of a sour economy. He never forgot burns his advice, nor the lesson that a recession was the political kiss of death for an incumbent. End Quote, we learned something else that was just like, okay, at least that was my reaction. So as William McChesney Martin's tenure is just about up as being the Fed chairman, Nixon tells burns that he's going to have the job. So in 1969 or thereabouts, Nixon and burns are having this conversation that's been relayed here by Garten, and I was just like, okay, like it was such a moment of this is how the world actually works. Nixon says My relations with the Fed will be different than they were with Bill Martin there. He was always six months late doing anything I'm counting on you are. Author, to keep us out of a recession. Burns says, Yes, Mr. President, I don't like to be late. Nixon says the Fed and the money supply are more important than anything the Bureau of the Budget does. I want you to come over and see me privately any time. I know there's a myth of the autonomous fed. And when you go up for confirmation, some Senator may ask you about your friendship with the President. Appearances are going to be important, so you can call Ehrlichman and get messages to me, and he'll call you back the myth of the autonomous fed. So I think this is interesting, because it's like, well, which entity is the tail and which entity is the actual dog? Does the government do the bidding of the Fed? Does the Fed do the bidding of the government? I guess for me, it doesn't matter too terribly much, because, as I've said many times before, I think all of these fat cats are piggies that eat trough, that eat slop from the same trough, six of one, half a dozen of the other. It doesn't really matter, but just think about that the balls Enos, hey, look, pal, I'm getting ready to appoint you as the chairman, and even though you're supposed to be autonomous and independent and not influenced by me. Wink. We both know that's not fucking true, and when I put you in there, you're gonna do what I say, right? Because if you're not, we're gonna have a problem, pal. This is another reason why, I guess I don't understand the Nixon apologists that are like, Well, we think he got set up for Watergate. We think that was a way to just shove him out. We don't think that he actually planned any of that. It was so bizarre and so stupid. I go back to what I said earlier in this episode. Even if that's true, if he was set up in the whole Watergate thing, and frankly, had nothing to do with it, that doesn't mean that he was like the best president ever and completely ethical. Give me a break. We learn about the Phillips curve and this idea that high prices and high unemployment were not supposed to happen simultaneously. The whole notion of 1970 stagflation was thought to be an impossibility. You would have one but not the other, so you would know which problem to tackle. We know differently. Now, of course, in this same chapter about Arthur burns, we get back to this idea of the Fed being independent. Wink at a Cabinet meeting. Burns, said Eisenhower liked to talk about the independence of the Federal Reserve, they begin to believe it. Let's not make that mistake and talk about the independence of the Fed. But when burns assumed the Fed Chairman's job, his views changed, yeah, but probably not for long, because I think, as I said, all of these piggies are eating slop from the same trough. So I think we have JFK as an example of somebody who gets into office and thinks I'm going to actually run the show, I'm going to actually try to do what I think is best. And then, boom, boom. No, you're not in the chapter about Peter Peterson, who was also involved in that weekend at Camp David. We learned that he was chairman and CEO of Bill and Howell. So we have another connection to corporate America. We also learned he started working at a research company while studying marketing in the evenings at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he earned an MBA. He moved to McCann Erickson, a large advertising firm where he pitched and lured clients such as Peter Pan peanut butter rival packing CO and swift and Co. Eventually Peterson joined Bell and how as executive vice president for marketing, then rose up the ladder to run the firm. End Quote, As I said, there's such a revolving door, Wall Street, corporate America, the government, the Fed, six and one half a dozen of the other in the chapter the wolf at the door, we learn that Nixon was aggravated by the idea that Arthur burns might, quote, go rogue and decide that the Fed should be independent. We read Nixon was furious with burns and determined to teach him a lesson. Suddenly, press articles began to appear undermining the Fed Chairman. First, it was rumored in the media that the President was considering enlarging the board of the Fed, in a sense, packing it with Nixon supporters and thereby undercutting burns capacity to get his way on policy. Newspapers and broadcasters also reported that the administration was considering eliminating the Fed's independence and making it report to the Treasury. And finally, and more personally, unidentified sources said that Burns had asked for a pay raise, which was seen as hypocritical, given that he had been demanding wage and price restraints for the entire economy. This week, the deep hostility between the administration and the chairman of the Fed broke out in the open. Wrote. Business Week, clearly, officials are trying to force burns back in line. End, quote, yeah, well, remember Jim Garrison told you a troublesome person will be discredited, removed, or killed, whatever it takes for you to get brought back in line, and if you're not, that's the thing. If you can't be brought in line, you can't be bought, you can't be threatened, you just won't be there anymore.

Garten also goes through piece by piece. The statement that Nixon made to the nation on August 15, 1971 one of the things that he says in the speech is prosperity without war requires action on three fronts. We must create more and better jobs. We must stop the rise in the cost of living. We must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators. But what really happened to actually do any of those things? I know, I know. I'm trying to resist the urge, but I just have to say it. I mean, JFK actually was trying to do those things. If you go back and read Donald Gibson's book battling Wall Street, you'll see it clear as day. And I'm just like, this is more of the same old, same old rhetoric. He also claims that the unemployment rate today is below the average of the four peacetime years of the 1960s which I think probably involved some funny math, but we see this all the time. Remember, 3.9% unemployment rate too open jobs for every one unemployed person, churning and burning, doing great, resilient consumer. Meanwhile, we all knew it was a bunch of bullshit, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics would go back and quietly revise the jobs numbers so that historically on paper, it would be really clear that we didn't have a robust and resilient labor market. Oh, here's a flashback for you too, not just to what he's talking about in this speech in 71 but what we've been through in the post covid era, for example, in the four war years, between 65 and 69 your wage increases were completely eaten up by price increases. Your paychecks were higher, but you were no better off. We have made progress against the rise in the cost of living. Oh, we saw a lot of this rhetoric, like inflation is abating. We're seeing it cooling off. And then somebody in the media would be like, Well, no, it really isn't. Oh no, it really isn't. I published a blog post about British Gas lighting because some member of parliament went on television. It was like, inflation is coming down. Prices are coming down. There's more money in your paycheck. And the hosts were like, No, it isn't. Inflation is not coming down. And this lady was like, Well, I mean, there's still inflation, but it's instead of it being like 6% it's at 4% so I mean, prices are still going up, but they're not going up quite as high, quite as fast. So we're going to take a victory lap on that. And the hosts are looking at her like, Lady, are you brain dead? They'll tell you anything if they think you're dumb enough to believe it. On August 16, we're told that the stock market jumps 32 points. We're told that the mass media reacts favorably. We're told that a poll, some type of opinion poll was conducted that says, In all the years that I've been doing business, I've never seen anything this unanimous, unless maybe it was the reaction to Pearl Harbor that definitely I'm no offense, but that sounds like propaganda to me. Apparently, not everybody was buying this. We read as for labor, although the union supported a cheaper dollar and the import surcharge, leaders such as George Meany, president of the AFL CIO called the plan Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to pay the rich. Leonard woodcock, President of the United Auto Workers, said he was ready to declare war on the administration, if that's what Nixon wanted in quote, just that one statement, Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to pay the rich. That's what these fuckers do. Over and over again. I will yet again drop the link from Oxfam about how they went to Davos in 2023 and sat there and told the fat cats how wealthy they became during the pandemic. Everybody else suffered. Mom and pop shops and small to medium businesses were shuttered. People lost their jobs. Some people completely lost their businesses, and the businesses have never come back. But yet the fat cats profiteer why they made more money. It was just insane how much money the top 1% garnered during the pandemic. Yeah, that's what they do. It's like, I've used the analogy before. It's like a tube of toothpaste. How you squeeze the toothpaste up from the bottom so that it will collect at the top? It's exactly what happens. We learn of a 1972 conversation that went on between Haldeman and. Nixon, just listen to this. So Haldeman says, Did you get the report that the British floated the pound last night? Nixon, no, I don't think so they have. Haldeman, they did. Nixon, that's devaluation. Haldeman, yeah. Flanagan, has a report on it here. Nixon, I don't care about it. Haldeman, you want a rundown Nixon, no, I don't care. Nothing we can do about it. Haldeman Burns is concerned about speculation about the lira. Nixon, well, I don't give a shit about the lira. So here's what this makes me wonder. Okay, I'm gonna put on my tin foil hat here. This is the conspiracy theories, after all, and ask questions we're not supposed to ask. He's saying, I don't give a shit about the currency. I don't give a shit about these these people in these places. Here's my question. Was all of this by design? Was he meant to take the dollar off the gold standard? Was somebody much higher than him pulling the strings and encouraging this to happen, because he doesn't even give a shit. He says, so. So I'm just sort of like, Hmm, I wonder if he was doing the bidding of some puppet master a lot higher up the food chain than the US President. Just a speculation. in one of the last chapters, which is titled the long view. We learn in the 1980s Latin American governments that had borrowed heavily in dollars went bankrupt when the value of the dollar soared and they couldn't repay their debts. In 1987 the US experienced a stock market meltdown, in part because of disputes over trade and currency issues between the United States and West Germany in 1995 to prevent a broader banking catastrophe, Washington and the IMF had to bail out Mexico, which couldn't pay its dollar denominated debts. In 97 currency disturbances that began in Thailand spread like wildfire throughout Asia and into emerging market economies on other continents, sending the dollar on a roller coaster ride. This was followed by a Russian default on dollars owed to the US banks that until quail threatened to do major damage to Wall Street, the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression, arrived in 2008 the effects lingered on for at least a decade and led to another long crisis that enveloped the Eurozone, centering first on Spain and Portugal and then gravitating to Greece. The long term impact of the coronavirus pandemic could constitute another global economic and financial catastrophe. As the global economy slows to a crawl, governments take on unprecedented amounts of debt. Central Banks turn themselves into currency printing presses, bankruptcies multiply, and the world's productive capacities and workforces take a generation to recover. At least he's telling you, I mean, you're somebody that's involved with Blackstone, telling you at least a generation to recover. I hope you're listening. On October 15, 2020, Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the IMF, said as much in addressing the eventual destructive impact of today we face a new Bretton Woods moment. She's told a meeting of the world's top financial officials, one thing is for sure, there will be more crises. Some may come from failures within the financial system, such as reckless risk taking combined with an inadequate cushion of bank reserves. Some may come from challenges to the dollar. Some may originate from digital currencies or massive cyber attacks, and some may result from extreme levels of indebtedness in the post era, combined with rising interest rates and debt servicing costs. But no matter the reason, the US dollar will be at the center of any global disturbance, and managing the greenback will be part of the challenge and the solution. End quote, oh, he's telling you. He's telling you. In the book's final chapter, which is titled The weekend in retrospect, in this final chapter, he writes the weekend during which a small group of men decided to sever the greenback from its gold moorings, was a critical turning point for the modern global economy. The Nixon administration's actions over those three days led to the most significant structural changes regarding the dollar and the International Monetary System between the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement and today, this was no small thing. I would agree. It was a potent symbol of American industrial and military power across the globe. It was the standard against which all other currencies were valued. The greenback was at the crossroads of foreign and domestic policy, affecting the United States's relations with the world, driving a good deal of international commerce, and influencing the country's economic growth, employment and industrial structure. So he outlines what he feels are legitimate criticisms, the first of which is wage and price controls were a fiasco. The second vital aspects of American competitive, competitiveness were neglected. America acted to unilate. Laterally, the administration lacked a long term strategy. The Camp David weekend did not achieve real change until the Jamaica Accords of 1976 it was too long and tortuous and ordeal US policies unleashed a decade of inflation. Yeah, let's don't forget that the administration removed the one and only anchor for the international monetary system. And finally, it was all about the election. He also highlights some points that he feels like, okay, like point counterpoint, some things that maybe if we were to look at it more sympathetically, which he's doing. Not me to be clear, gold had become an untenable burden for the United States, and floating exchange rates were good for America. The US Dollar continued to reign supreme, with all the attendant economic and foreign policy benefits, dangerous protectionist pressures were quelled. The spirit of Bretton Woods was preserved in Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I get that authors are under a certain amount of pressure to end on a high note. And also, if he had just said, Hey, I'm going to lambast this entire weekend and this entire program, there would have been criticism of, well, what about the good things that it did? So I get it. Authors have to walk a fine line. When somebody else is publishing your book, you're not self publishing it, and you're beholden to a publisher to get your book out there. It is what it is. This is an interesting and complicated, tangled up mess, as I so often do. I will turn the question back to you, because that's one of the goals for me of doing this podcast. Is for people to have points to ponder, things to think about, so they come to their own conclusions. Look at the evidence, weigh and measure the information for yourself and come to your own conclusions. What do you think? Do you think it was the right move to unmarry the dollar from the gold standard? Do you feel like the preponderance of evidence is that was the smart thing to do. Me personally, I don't think it's any surprise when I tell you I don't think it was the smart thing to do, because we've had reams and reams of bullshit fiat currency ever since just willy nilly fire up the printing press and we go further and further and further in debt, and the dollar loses more and more of its value. We keep having these QE and Qt cycles, easy money, difficult money, higher interest rates, lower interest rates, feast, famine cycles, boom, bust cycles. And you know, they're engineered. They don't happen on accident. It's like how JFK said, markets are man made. They're not a fact of nature. I mean, when was the last time that you saw a flock of birds making their own stock market. Markets are not a fact of nature. They are man made. And I believe these boom bust cycles and the QE and the Qt and all of that. I mean, it's done on purpose, and it's done pretty clearly, I think, to squeeze the wealth out of the middle and lower classes to make them more and more subservient to the fat cats, to have feudalism 2.0 that's just what I think. What do you think this book is worth your time? I feel like Americans are, for the most part, woefully ignorant of their own history, and we need to know about these exact types of meetings that go on behind closed doors, where the power brokers get together and decide what will happen to John and Jane Q Public, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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