Ann Pettifor

But they chose not to do that.

They kept wanting to buy from abroad.

Yeah.

And so the answer to that was to say, oh, to hell with this standard for balancing the books.

We're not going to pay anymore.

We're not going to pay the dollars relative to gold.

Nixon decided to do this without consulting.

The rest of the world, he goes on the television and says, we're not going to repay our debts in the way that we promised we would do before.

And if you don't like that, go and jump in the lake.

And so they simply default on their obligations to repay their debts in the way that was agreed.

And that's the sovereign default.

Economists won't call it that.

I don't know why, but they don't call it a sovereign default.

But it's what, you know, poor countries in Africa do.

That's what the Americans did.

But instead of the IMF flying in and saying, structurally adjust your economic restored balance,

They said, oh, well, you know, it's the Americans.

The only one who really disagreed with us was President de Gaulle.

They sent a battleship to New York to retrieve their gold from Fort Knox.

And they said, we don't want it.