Gillian Tett

speaker

1,226 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 2 Sep

Gillian Tett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

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The Story of Money · Why Richard Nixon torpedoed the global monetary system · 3 Jun 2026 podcast

So Jeffrey, the dollar became the linchpin of the global monetary system. matched

So can you explain how and why, what that really meant in practice to have the dollar as the center of the Bretton Woods system? matched

Well, that's a great point. matched

I mean, one of the consequences of this, from what you're saying, is that it meant that the system was totally asymmetric. matched

I mean, essentially, other countries were dependent on the US and its promises to convert dollars into gold. matched

Is that matched

in practical matched

that meant the dollar was massively overvalued. matched

People could see that or sense it. matched

And of course, one of the big problems is that when you have governments that are trying to manage the value of a currency, what's happening with inflation matters enormously. matched

And that was starting to go wrong as well, wasn't it, Jeff? matched

Well, all of this doesn't sound horribly familiar, I must say, but matched

was also the argument that was put forward by Robert Triffin in 1959, that it was actually the international demand for dollars that was the key factor driving things, wasn't it? matched

What was the so-called Triffin dilemma that lots of economic students have to study? matched

Of course, that shows, once again, in a way that's very relevant today, that things can seem incredibly stable and secure and fixed and permanent until suddenly they're not. matched

Exactly. matched

Well, welcome back. matched

So just to recap, it's 1969. matched

The dollar's position is beginning to look decidably wobbly. matched

The dollar's reserves piling up in the foreign central banks are already worth two to three times the value of US Federal Reserve's entire gold reserves. matched

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