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Did you know?

7 Comments

I had no idea of this one.  Did you know that Nixon on August 15, 1971 “closed the gold window and devalued the dollar.”

It was one of the rules or agreements of the Bretton Woods System that came out of the Bretton Woods Conference right after WWII in New Hampshire.

The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value—plus or minus one percent—in terms of gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. In the face of increasing financial strain, the system collapsed in 1971, after the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the dollars to gold. This action caused considerable financial stress in the world economy and created the unique situation whereby the United States dollar became the “reserve currency” for the states which had signed the agreement.

7 Comments

  1. Unstable Isotope
    April 8, 2009,

    Michael Pollan has also pointed out that Nixon is responsible for our current food system – basically encouraging big factory farms and turning to soybean and corn as staple foods. Yep, it’s Nixon’s fault that Americans are fat.

    From michaelpollan.com

    Food prices soared during the Nixon administration, prompting an inverse correlation in his poll numbers, so Washington began subsidizing corn.

    …

    Except that before too long there was a glut of corn; along came inventive ways to dispose of the mountains of it. Corn found its way into much commercial beer, a sweetener in the form of HFCS, pet food filler, farm animal feed and as a base in less attractive-sounding multi-syllabic ingredients in about 25 per cent of the products found on our grocery store shelves.
    …

    On top of that, corn fructose is much harder for our bodies to metabolize than traditional cane sugar glucose, and a possible cause of diabetes (one major U.S. study projects that one in three Americans born in 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetimes).

  2. Susan Regis Collins
    April 8, 2009,

    It’s true that high futose sh*t is in almost everything.

    Return the small growers to their rightful place in the food supply chain. F*ck the agri-business theives. Be loyal, buy local….it’s done all over the world. No kidding.

  3. Dorian Gray
    April 8, 2009,

    SRC is right! Since I’ve read Pollan I get all my meat and eggs at a sustainable organic farm in MD.

    Sorry for the thread jack DV – The Nixon gold standard thing is well documented. Haven’t you ever listened to a “Not Brian” rant?

  5. Unstable Isotope
    April 8, 2009,

    DV,

    It’s my fault for threadjacking. DG was just responding.

  7. Truth Teller
    April 9, 2009,

    Nixon is also responsible for the current Health care System. Once he found out that HMO’S were for profit and not to aid the sick he approved the plan.

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