On August 15th, 1971, the then-president of the United States, Richard Nixon, made an eighteen-minute speech to the country whose effects impacted the world. Among other subjects, he announced the end of the dollar-gold parity, which was a shock.

First of all, that decision meant the death of the Bretton Woods Monetary System without telling what would replace it. This fact represented an abrupt change in the international economic order. Secondly, Nixon’s initiative undermined the economic development strategies used since 1947, when the Cold War had started. Those strategies were called “development by invitation” in the center countries and “national developmentalism” in the peripheral ones. Thirdly, the decision strengthened the attacks against the dollar as the main currency in the world, putting more pressure on the international currency hierarchy since then. Finally, in the history of monetary standards, the abandonment of precious metals, as a reference of value, revealed the “charter nature” of money to the detriment of the metallist one.

In the debates on the Bretton Wood system, from its birth and development to its crisis and implosion, a particular narrative seems to prevail. This mainstream interpretation ascribes to the traumas of the great social-economic crisis in the thirties, the system’s origins. Besides the austerity public policies and the automatic recessive adjustments, at the heart of the twenties’ liberal economic order was the freedom of capital movements, whose behavior destabilized the exchange rates, the payments balances, and even the national economies. They were the root causes of the great depression of the thirties, mainly after the Wall Street crash of 1929 when the social and economic context got pretty worse. This scenario fostered the rise of far-right wings mainly in Europe, which created the elements of the beginning of the Second World War.

According to this view, to avoid another experience such as the great economic depression of the thirties and its disastrous effects, the diplomatic representatives of forty-four countries gathered in July 1944 in Bretton Woods, aiming to negotiate a new economic order to the post-war. The talks concluded that the most relevant cause of the economic crisis was the financial capital and its liberty to act against markets, currencies, and national economies. The central proposal was to guarantee the autonomy of the national economic policies. For this reason, they agreed on some points. For instance, capital controls; a system of fixed exchange rates but manageable when necessary; and stabilization funds via IMF without counterparts of recessive policies. It was a victory of Keynesianism against liberal economic orthodoxy. The very participation of John Maynard Keynes as the British government representative in the negotiations was a symbol of it, despite his defeat in defense of a supranational currency, the Bancor, as a new monetary standard.

As a result, the capitalist world, mainly Europe and Japan, achieved excellent economic outputs during the 50s and 60s in terms of product, income, and employment growth, just as international trade and foreign direct investments.

Finally, the mainstream narrative alleges that, during the period, the deficits in the U.S. balance of payments led to the sprawl of the dollar liquidity in the international system without an increase in the Fed’s gold reserves. According to this argument, the military spending growth due to the Vietnam War, above all, triggered such macroeconomic imbalances. So, pressures and speculative attacks against the dollar-gold parity became inevitable. Therefore, in 1971, the situation turned out to be unsustainable.

Nevertheless, from a geopolitical view, it is possible to consider another interpretation for the Bretton Wood system, from its creation to its collapse. First of all, although the authorities of different countries had signed the accords in July 1944, since Roosevelt’s death in March 1945, relevant parts of the agreements were shelved. Henry Morgenthau and Harry White, architects of the postwar new economic order, lost room in the Truman administration. In their place, the bankers constrained the president to implement the Key Currency Plan, which proposed to rebuild a liberal international financial order as it had been in the twenties. However, the new system would rest on the dollar and Wall Street instead of the Pound and the City. Regarding Germany and Japan, the new U.S. orientation aimed to wreck their large industrial conglomerates, transforming their national economies into semiperipheral ones.

Indeed, the international economic order established from 1945 to 1947 operated quite differently than the Agreements of 1944, and the results were terrible. The attempts to recover the national economies stumbled upon the dollar shortage and the difficulties in the Balances of Payments. In this context, the financial capitals in Europe ran to the United States, destabilizing the exchange rates, the external accounts, and, therefore, the national economies in Western Europe. As is natural to all liberal finance orders, not considering capital controls was the core of the economic problems.

Furthermore, during the war, Josef Stalin expanded the borderlines of the Soviet Union and its area of influence to a position unthinkable to any Romanov Emperor. Not to mention that Russia found itself, for the first time in its history, without a single great rival power in all of Eurasia, as said by George Kennan himself, in an official document of May 1945, entitled The International Position of Russia at the End of the War with Germany.

Anyway, the change in the strategy of the Truman Administration lingered to happen. And it took place only in 1947 for two reasons: the civil war in Greece between the old monarchy supported by the British against the anti-fascist forces led by communists and upheld by the Kremlin; and the pressure of Moscow on Ankara to control territories in Anatolia and install two military bases at the straits. Since then, the U.S. president opted for occupying part of the Rimland that Nicholas Spykman had written about before, in his book of 1942, America’s Strategy in the World Politics.

From a geo-historical point of view, it meant a long-standing tradition of Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought of maintaining Russia outside of the Mediterranean Sea. Its roots had already been in the British imperial policy of the 19th century, as the Greek independence process during 1821-1830 demonstrates.

The head orientation of the new security doctrine launched by Truman in 1947 pointed to the necessity of permanent and global containment of the USSR. The objective was to freeze their respective areas of influence, leaving both countries, in effect, in a continuous opposition against each other. The U.S. projection of securities lines from their Atlantic borders to the Eurasian continental mass required the stabilization of the new disputed regions, mainly in the fimbriae of Asia. Working out the social and economic problems in these regions became part of the U.S. national security strategy. And, at that moment, the main actions prioritized Europe and Japan.

Then, to avoid the Soviet projection in a Europe marked by a severe economic crisis, the United States resumed rebuilding an international order focused on national product expansions, income growths, and employment improvements. The Marshall Plan and the rescue of the Bretton Woods proposals shaped the core of American economic initiatives. Therefore, both of them had a main geopolitical objective. They were an expression of the submission of the economic order to the geopolitical one. In other words, one could define both Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods system as pieces of economic geostrategy of a new kind of conflict, born around 1947, the Cold War. So, the starting point of the Bretton Woods implementation relies essentially on geopolitics, not on social-economic traumas from the thirties. It could be said, in this way, that the Soviet Union and its leader, Josef Stalin, were respectively the entity and personal genuinely responsible for the economic reconstruction of Europe and the Bretton Woods system’s birth.

As a result, the United States could stabilize the national economies in the sensitive regions relative to Cold War and freeze the frontiers with the communist nations. In the limit, they promoted a quarter-century of extraordinary development in first-world countries. In short, the Cold War was the background that allowed the Bretton Woods System to work out from 1947 until the moment when the U.S. economic strategy to its geopolitical struggles changed.

Concerning Bretton Woods’ contradictions, the creation of Euromarkets in 1958 within England, supported by U.S. authorities, allowed the British government to conciliate two different challenges: on the one hand, carrying out a growth-oriented economic policy; and, on the other, defending London’s position in the international financial business. However, these new markets, out of the control of any monetary authorities, expanded more and more the dollar liquidity in the system.

Unlike the mainstream narrative, the U.S. external accounts weren’t unbalanced, shown in the rather unexpressive U.S. compensatory capital flows in its Balance of Payments during the Bretton Woods period. Part of the system dollar liquidity arose from what Charles Kindleberger [1] and Hyman Minsky [2] described as the deepening process of resources inflows and outflows from the United States to the world. While the Trade Balance and the Current Account were positives, the U.S. Capital Account was negative due to the Foreign Direct Investment. So, the pressure against the dollar-gold parity didn’t come from the supposed deficits in their external accounts. It stemmed from the financial markets, whose operations manifolded without restrictions to the dollar assets in the capitalist world, namely, Euromarkets. The problem was that it occurred without a counterpart of growth in the Fed’s gold reserves.

Therefore, if the Bretton Woods implementation were geopolitical and not due to the traumas of the thirties’ economic crisis, its contradictions came from the Euromarkets and not from the North American external accounts’ imbalances. In turn, its existence depended on how useful it would be to U.S. foreign policy.

In 1969, the international context changed expressively. If Bretton Woods System had already promoted the most important historical era of capitalism, the Soviet Union had also achieved substantial strategic improvements in the 60s. There had been its nuclear weapons’ progress, the strengthening of its navy, the development of edge-cutting aerospace technology, and the expansion of its oil production, among others. And this new Soviet success in the 60s had pressured not only the United States and its allies from the first world but also the Popular Republic of China. In that background, Beijing signalized to Washington a careful approach in 1969. The Nixon administration, in turn, took advantage and started the Triangular Diplomacy. Since then, the American government implemented concessions to Beijing and Moscow, such as reductions of economic sanctions.

For example, in that year, the United States created new legislation, altering the Export Control Act of 1949. Later, in April 1971, only three months before the famous Nixon’s speech, the United States lifted some previous restrictions once more. It allowed the purchase of dollars by China and USSR to encourage their import of products from the capitalist world. So, a valuable triangular diplomacy result was the beginning of the entrance process of China and the Soviet Union into the dollar monetary territory on the eve of the end of the Bretton Woods System.

When Nixon addressed the American people on television in August 1971, the strategy of 1947 had already achieved its economic aims. Besides, Japan and Germany had already become strong adversaries in the international economic competition. Not to mention, the Bretton Woods contradictions still required efforts and coordination with the Europeans and Japanese in financial governance, such as in the Gold Pool and the IMF due to Special Drawing Rights, which sometimes was causing tension and opposition among them. Finally, the Bretton Woods System still enforced restrictions on the U.S. managing their economic policy, as in the dollar-gold parity defense.

Richard Nixon started his famous speech by mentioning: alleged advances in “achieving the end of the Vietnam War,” the “challenges of peace,” despite not specifying them, and the “prosperity without military conflicts.” Next, he connected the last of these issues directly to jobs creation in the United States, control of the internal cost of living, and dollar protection, going quickly from tricky subjects of international relations to national issues in daily life. Then, Nixon announced some economic measures with an orthodox bias to encourage the employment increase, for example, tax reductions and spending cuts. He also ordered radical heterodox economic policies to contain the rise in prices: the freeze on all prices and wages for 90 days.

The population was likely astonished and pretty worried about such sort of economic measures, because it always creates graves problems of relative price imbalances. Probably, when Nixon approached the theme of “protection the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary stability around the world,” as he said, the attention in the country was still in the freeze on prices and salaries.

After describing the speculators’ efforts in “waging an all-out war on the dollar,” he argued that the strength of a nation’s currency rests on the strength of that nation’s economy. And, then, Nixon claimed the U.S. position in the international monetary hierarchy by saying that “the American economy is by far the strongest in the world.” Next, he clarified the U.S. disposition when he ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to take any necessary action to defend the dollar. And, finally, he announced what would be unthinkable until that moment: the suspension of the dollar-gold convertibility. According to him, a bugaboo that it should lay to rest.

For the domestic audience, Nixon justified the decision by the devaluation advantages to the American-made products in America. For that matter, he also imposed an additional tax of 10% on goods imported into the United States.

Nixon announced the abandonment of the old economic geostrategy inaugurated in 1947 by the Truman administration. He pointed that economies of the major industrial nations of Europe and Asia had become strong competitors against the United States. Then, there was no longer any need for “the United States to compete with one hand beyond her back.” According to Nixon, the time had come for first-world nations to compete as equals. In other words, President Nixon put an end to the development by invitation, except for China, which had been engaging in a strategic rapprochement with the United States.

Summarizing the argument, before 1969, as long as the foreign policy hadn’t changed, the successive U.S. administrations had carried on upholding the Bretton Woods System and its aims, despite its contradictions. To circumvent its problems, they had implemented some efforts, as Gold Pool, Special Drawing Rights, etc. Therefore, during the Cold War’s first decades, the U.S. support for the Bretton Wood order had occurred since this economic system had reached its geopolitical objectives. However, since the international context had changed expressively in the 60s, the economic order had become more and more inappropriate. It had depleted as a Cold War’s strategic instrument, and it had been inadequate and outdated for the new geopolitical struggles and geoeconomic challenges. In other words, the emergence of new economic competitors and mainly the outcomes of Soviet projection in the system brought shifts in U.S. foreign policy in 1969, originating the triangular diplomacy. And, two years later, in 1971, the United States unilaterally abandoned the Bretton Woods Agreements.

It sounds ironic that the most significant historical experience of western capitalism was related to Stalin’s strategy of enlarging the Soviet frontiers in the context of the Second World War and the capacity of the Soviet Union to respond to the Cold War against the United States, mainly during the 60s.

[1] Kindleberger, Charles. P. A Financial History of Western Europe. Oxford University Press, 1993. (p. 453).
[2] Minsky, Hyman. Financial Integration and National Economic Policy. In: Ciclo de Seminários, 25 anos de economia na UNICAMP, Campinas, agosto-outubro de 1993. (p. 17-18).
[3] Grzybowski, Kazimierz. Control of U.S. Trade with China: an overview. Law and Contemporany Problems, 175-181. Summer, 1973. (p.180)

At this event, Le Maire stated ever-so candidly that “the Bretton Woods order has reached its limits. Unless we are able to re-invent Bretton Woods, the New Silk Road might become the New World Order”.

He went onto state that “the pillars of that order have been the International Monetary Fund and its sister institution, the World Bank since their inception at the Bretton Woods conference in  New Hampshire in 1944.”

Were a radical transformation not undertaken immediately, then Le Maire laments “Chinese standards on state and on access to public procurements, on intellectual property could become global standards”.

The finance minister’s statements reflect the growing awareness that two opposing systems operating on two conflicting sets of principles and standards are currently in conflict, where only one can succeed. Yet as much as he appears to be aware of the forces at play between two systems, Le Maire fails miserably to identify what the Bretton Woods System was meant to accomplish in the first place, or what type of “radical transformation” is needed to save Europe from the collapse of its own speculation-ridden system.

Le Maire dives so deeply out of reality that he actually believes that the radical transformation desperately needed in the west does not involve collaborating with the New Silk Road, but rather to strengthen the power of Brussels, while becoming more technocratic and more green (aka: de-industrialized, de-populated).

The Bretton Woods of 1944 and New Silk Road of Today

Seventy five years of revisionist historians largely funded by the British Roundtable/Chatham House and its American branch (The Council on Foreign Relations) have obstructed the true anti-imperial nature of the founding intention of Bretton Woods and the post war order centered on the United Nations.

Then, much as today, two opposing factions were vying to shape the essence of the world order as the Nazi machine (funded by Wall Street and London’s Bank of International Settlements) was drawing to a close. I am not talking about Capitalism vs. Communism.

This faction fight was between New Deal nationalists led by Franklin Roosevelt vs those racist imperialists represented by Sir Winston Churchill who wished to use the crisis of the war to establish a revived British Empire strengthened by American muscle. FDR’s New Dealers were characterized by their total adherence to the belief that the plague of colonialism had to be undone and a new age of long term development of great infrastructure projects had to characterize the community of sovereign nations for the coming century. These patriots believed in the internationalization of the New Deal, were committed to working with Russia and China as natural allies of America and profoundly distrusted the British.

In the case of Bretton Woods, where representatives from 44 nations convened for two weeks to create a new post war system in July 1944, this fight amounted to a battle between FDR’s trusted economic advisor Harry Dexter White (first director of the IMF and ally of FDR’s vice-president Henry Wallace) and Lord John Maynard Keynes (eugenicist, pedophile and defender of the British Empire).

Churchill and Keynes: Hard Racist/Soft Racist of the Empire

Where Churchill represented the unapologetic conservative proponent of the “White Man’s Burden” to exercise dominion over the “inferior” colored peoples of the earth, Keynes represented the soft cop of the Empire as a “Fabian Society Socialist” (aka: Social Engineer) from the London School of Economics. Where Churchill’s ilk preferred mowing down their enemies with Canons, body counts and torture as seen in the Boer War or opium wars or WWI, Keynes’ Fabian methods preferred attrition and slow subversion. Either way, the result of either pathway was the same.

While many know of the racist and pro-fascist views of Sir Churchill who spoke admiringly of Mussolini and even Hitler in the early days when it was still believed that these fascists and corporatists would act as marcher lords for the financial oligarchy, but most people are unaware that Keynes also supported Hitler and despised FDR.

Contradicting the mythos that FDR was a Keynesian, FDR’s assistant Francis Perkins recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her: “I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist.” In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal stated he had “supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking.”

In his 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes wrote: “For I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo Saxon countries. Nevertheless, the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.”

Keynes Contaminates Bretton Woods

Lord Keynes was deployed to lead the British delegation to Bretton Woods and advance a Delphic plan that called for creating an International Clearing Union controlled by the City of London denominating all payments in a common accounting unit: the Bancor.

The Bancor would be used to measure all nations’ trade or surplus deficits- expropriating surpluses by the end of the year and taxing countries with deficits. The imposition of a “mathematical architecture” upon the physical (non-mathematical) systems of nations was the surest way to keep an invisible cage upon the earth under an ideal of “mathematical equilibrium.” The sadistic fiscal austerity demanded by mathematical economists and other technocrats in Brussels reflect the still active force of Keynes’ spirit haunting the world today.

The Bretton Woods as a Global New Deal

In opposition to Keynes, FDR’s America was represented by his close ally Harry Dexter White in Bretton Woods. White (today slandered as a Soviet agent by CFR historians) fought tooth and nail to ensure that Britain would not be in the driver’s seat of the new emerging economic system or the important mechanisms of the IMF that he would go onto lead, World Bank or monetary policy more generally. White ensured the colonial economic “preference” system Britain used to maintain free trade looting across its empire was destroyed, and the pound sterling did not play a primary role in global trade. Instead a fixed exchange rate system was set up to guarantee that speculation could not run rampant over national growth strategies and the dollar (then backed by a powerful PHYSICAL economic platform) was a backbone for world trade (1).

White, like Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, and Harry Hopkins believed that the US currency (rather than the pound sterling) had to become the foundation for the world economy as America exited WWII as the most powerful productive, growing nation of the world untouched by the ravages of Eurasian war.

Just as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was used like a national bank to fund thousands of great infrastructure, transport, energy, and water projects during the New Deal and just as Glass-Steagall broke the monopoly of private speculative finance over the productive economy, these New Dealers wished to use the World Bank and IMF to issue long term, low interest productive credit for long term mega infrastructure projects around the world. Not just in Europe’s reconstruction.

FDR’s battle with Churchill on this matter was well documented in his son/assistant Elliot Roosevelt’s book As He Saw It (1946): “I’ve tried to make it clear … that while we’re [Britain’s] allies and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea that we’re in it just to help them hang on to their archaic, medieval empire ideas … I hope they realize they’re not senior partner; that we are not going to sit by and watch their system stultify the growth of every country in Asia and half the countries in Europe to boot.”

FDR continued: “`The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements–all you’re doing is storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you’re doing is negating the value of any kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.”

Writing from Washington in a hysteria to Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that Roosevelt ”contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires.”

In 1942, FDR sent his close ally Wendell Wilkie on a world tour to meet with international leaders of colonial nations in order to spread the President’s vision for a global new deal. On his return Willkie gave a speech saying:

“In Africa, in the Middle East, throughout the Arab world, as well as in China, and the whole Far East, freedom means the orderly but scheduled abolition of the colonial system. I can assure you that this is true. I can assure you that the rule of people by other people is not freedom and not what we must fight to preserve… Men and women all over the world are on the march, physically, intellectually and spiritually. After centuries of ignorant and dull compliance, hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe and Asia have opened the books. Old fears no longer frighten them. They are no longer willing to be eastern slaves for western profits. They are beginning to know that men’s welfare throughout the world is interdependent. They are resolved, as we must be, that there is no more place for imperialism within their own society than in the society of nations.”

This vision was expressed continually by FDR in his hundreds of speeches, as well as by his Vice-President Henry Wallace, in the creation of the Atlantic Charter, and Four Freedoms. It was embedded in the defense of national sovereignty in the UN Constitution (conspicuously non-existent in the British-directed League of Nations earlier). It was meant to be the governing spirit animating the world as mankind entered a matured age of creative reason.

So What happened?

Describing the deep British penetration of the American state department, infested with Rhodes Scholars and Fabians, FDR described his understanding of the problem to his son:

“You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats over there aren’t in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of ’em: any number of ’em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!” I was told… six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It’s like the British Foreign Office….”

As long as FDR was in office, this British-run hive was kept at bay, but as soon as he died, the infestation took over America and immediately began undermining everything good FDR and his allies had created.

Harry Dexter White was ousted from his position as director of the IMF and labelled a communist agent. Henry Wallace was ousted for similar reasons and worked with White on a 1948 presidential bid as third party presidential candidate. William Wilkie (who had discussed creating a new party with FDR) died in October 1944, and FDR’s right hand man Harry Hopkins who did the most to initiate a close bond of friendship with Stalin, died in 1946.  Elliot Roosevelt interviewed Stalin a few years later, and recorded that Stalin always believed that Elliot’s father was poisoned “by Churchill’s gang.” By 1946, Churchill ushered in the Cold War setting former allies at each other’s’ throats for the remaining 70 years while dropping nuclear bombs on a defeated Japan. Stalin bemoaned Roosevelt’s death saying “the great dream has died”.

It took the oligarchy another 25 years to dismantle the fixed exchange rate system of the Bretton Woods leading to Nixon’s 1971 floating of the US dollar onto the speculative markets, converting the world ever more into a militarized casino system. Rather than used as instruments for long term growth as they were intended, the IMF and World Bank were used as tools of debt slavery and re-colonialization as outlined in John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the “great dream”. In the 21^st century, this great dream has taken the form of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).

If western nations wish to survive the oncoming collapse, then they would do well to join this new framework rather than drink more of the poison promoted by the likes of Le Maire, Ursula von Leyen and their masters who want to transform the dying remains of Bretton Woods into a “Green New Deal”.

Appendix: Churchill, Keynes and FDR in their own words…

 “Galton’s eccentric, sceptical, observing, flashing, cavalry-leader type of mind led him eventually to become the founder of the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists, namely eugenics.”

-John Maynard Keynes on Galton’s Eugenics, Eugenics Review 1946

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

– Winston Churchill to the Peel Commission, 1937

“There never has been, there isn’t now, and there never will be, any race of people fit to serve as masters over their fellow men… We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood.”

– Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 1941

“They who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.”

– Franklin Roosevelt

(1) American economist Lyndon LaRouche has explained in his hundreds of writings for decades, that as long as the PHYSICAL economy continued to grow without imagined “mathematical future” limits which some wished to impose onto the system, then the viability of the U.S. dollar was solid and the controlled sabotage of the gold standard during the 1960s, leading to the 1971 floating of the dollar could NEVER have occurred.

On May 25^th the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released an official statement to the effect that representatives of the US-appointed man in Venezuela, Juan Guaido, and representatives of the government of Venezuela, would meet again in Oslo this week to further a political dialogue.

The aim is to find a political solution to the US invented crisis in Venezuela. The hope is that it would avoid an open military conflict, and a possible relief of the sanctions policy that has hindered critical elements of the Venezuelan economy and human and social services. More to the point in the EU’s interest, is to stabilize the Venezuelan government and use the Oslo talks as both a symbolic and real vehicle to give assurances to European and Venezuelan elites who are under pressure from Washington Consensus, neoliberal politics.

The US is disturbed at the probability that its entire regime-change gambit has failed, and has disavowed the entire Oslo process. US Vice President Mike Pence, expressing his disappointment with the specter of rapprochement between Venezuelans, said shortly before the new announcement from Norway, that the time for dialogue “is over”, stating that “it is time for action” when referring to Venezuela.

The US appointed representatives in Venezuela such as Juan Guaido’s team, have expressed their extreme disappointment at this second round of talks in a mirrored way. It reflects, as they fear, a lack of cohesion between the transatlantic partners on the question of Venezuela. While it is common to speak of ‘international sanctions against Venezuela’, the most cutting and thorough are those from the United States, while the EU’s focus specifically on a smaller group of individuals and a ban on military related materials transactions – transactions which Venezuela was hardly reliant on and generally showed no interest in to begin with.

On May 26^th, a critical opposition figure, leader, and fugitive from the Venezuelan justice system, Antonio Ledezma, started a live talk from his Twitter account asking a set of rhetorical questions. “What is going on now in Norway? Dialogue? What is that? Ingenuity? Error? Who supports it? Who takes advantage of this gamble?” Ledezma inquired with exasperation.

Ledezma made it more than openly clear that he is entirely opposed to the meeting in Oslo: “Maduro and his mafia carve up the National Assembly and go to Norway as usurpers. I support Juan Guaidó but my responsibility is to say that I do not agree with the Norwegian format.”

The Spanish government in particular, representing the fact that Spanish capital interests in Venezuela remain solid and continue to express confidence in the PSUV government, have lambasted US policy on Venezuela. Spain’s relationship to Venezuela is profound, in in turn, successful Spanish obligations vis-à-vis Germany rely on a degree of solvency which Spain finds in Venezuela.

For example, on Wednesday May 8^th Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell spoke live on the state-owned channel TVE, saying that the US is acting “like the cowboys in the Far West, saying ‘careful or I’ll draw’.” His position, like that of the EU, as evidenced by the Oslo process, is that the solution to the Venezuelan crisis can only be “peaceful, negotiated and democratic.”

It should be noted also of course symbolically, that Oslo is an expression of the EU as problem-solver in the face of problem-creation stemming from the US’ post-Bretton Woods crisis.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said in a statement reiterating its commitment to seek “an agreed solution” between the parties, while being delicately diplomatic in their treatment of the fact that the ‘other’ Venezuelan party is in fact simply the United States. “We inform that the representatives of the main political actors of Venezuela have decided to return to Oslo next week to continue a process facilitated by Norway.”

When the US initially launched the formal phase of its regime-change gambit in Venezuela, they were successful in creating enough political momentum to encourage leading EU member states back in the last week of January of this year, to call on Maduro to make new elections within eight days, or face certain consequences.

Transatlantic media succeeded in creating a short-lived media hologram in which these consequences were explained as ‘recognizing Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela’, when this was not the consequence at all. This bluff was successfully called, new elections were not called in Venezuela, and the EU’s real position was revealed in time.

Such a media hologram may have even promised to convince those elements of the Venezuelan industrial/financial elite, and military, that the PSUV led government was in its last days. But this was not the case, and this did not materialize. That said, the EU is looking for an exit to this impasse, and recognizes the significance of its own relationship with China and Russia, who in turn are heavily invested in Venezuela under its present regime of obligations; the very same obligations that would be reneged upon in the event that regime change occurred in Venezuela.

Likewise, despite Venezuela being under severe US sanctions, and that Venezuela has not undertaken to clear its status with the IMF for over a decade (since 2007), or more clearly has not been allowed to in such a way consistent with its own sovereignty, the EU and its other international partners increasingly are aware that it is US policy that is out of alignment with the international community.

Nevertheless, US sanctions on Venezuela also affect partners engaged in direct transactions with the Bolivarian republic such that the specter of litigation and restricted trade for various global firms including those in the EU, has had a cooling effect overall.

At the same time, there is more here than meets the eye, and reflects a growing desire on the part of multilateral financial actors to be able to engage transparently and directly with Venezuela, and to do so means to restructure the US’ role in the primary post-war multilateral finance, capital, and development institutions that were issued from Bretton Woods, such as the IMF.

This problem, as it were, has even led to Venezuela’s creation of a hard-to-track crypto currency, the Petro, so that it could engage with various multilateral financial actors, perhaps even including some American firms, as an end-run around the US sanctions regime.

In short what we are seeing is that the EU views Venezuela as a focal point for this divergence over how to manage the decline of the USD as the world’s reserve currency. Wanted is its replacement with a system backed by a basket currency and a more coherent multipolar system more alike the proposal of Maynard Keynes’conception of an ICU, or international clearing union, although other proposals and remedies which take into account the peculiarities of the present technological and military impasse are also credible and on the table.

Norway’s role here is more than apparent – it is a proxy for the EU consensus in general. Despite initial misreporting across Atlanticist media outlets that the EU was in alignment with the US over the status of Guaido and the inevitability of the collapse of the Venezuelan government led by the PSUV, this second round of Oslo talks is representative of the contrary.

Indeed, in the continuing and unfolding saga of the US’ gambit to conduct a ‘regime change’ operation in Venezuela, the latest developments show a growing rift between the EU and the US.

At face value, the major transatlantic banks which come together, for example, to form the IMF, seem often times to present a united front. But behind this front there is instead a steadfastly growing variance over a range of issues, from energy projects involving Russia and Iran, the development of the Chinese belt and road initiative, as well as this case which centers Venezuela; the summation of all of these issues simultaneously.

All together this echoes an increasing assessment that the US dollar has lost its preeminence as the world’s reserve currency, as it has been increasingly displaced by a basket of currencies including, for example, the increasingly independent Euro and the Yuan. One of the key subjects in understanding this revolves around the abandonment of the critical informal regimes of the Bretton Woods system, even while formal aspects of the institutions it engendered (the IMF and WB) exist on in altered form.

If we understand Bretton Woods as consisting of both formal regimes such as the IMF and World Bank, and informal regimes such as the fixed (or pegged) exchange rates system and the use of gold to back the dollar (which in turn was the primary currency), then we see that the informal regimes which made the IMF a coherent system for economic growth and stability, have not been in effect since the Nixon era.

The failure to take into accurate account the vast changes and growth in the world’s physical economy is on display in the case study of Venezuela, whose leadership reflects a rational model, but which does not follow the diktats of the Washington Consensus. That numerous – even leading – IMF, WTO, and World Bank member states also reject the Washington Consensus, here looking at the EU in particular, is only another clear indicator: at issue is not Venezuela’s failure to adopt neoliberal policies proposed for it, but rather the US’s inability to adapt to the growing multipolar geo-economic system based in the growth of the world’s physical economy.

This obstinate position by Washington-Wall Street, and the City of London indeed only reflects that it has continued under certain illusions for four and a half decades. The US has relied heavily on its transnational and supranational influence, dominance over multilateral financial institutions and multinational corporations, using a welfare-subsidy system to bolster its private-co-public synergistic military industrial complex, which in turn acts as a global guarantor of its nominal economic dominance and ‘supply-chain security’, sometimes more clear when referred to as its ‘gunboat diplomacy’.

It has held onto these illusions at the institutional level through the formal regimes, even while it has abandoned the informal ones established at Bretton Woods, a framework whose stated aims have long since been usurped by the neoliberal Washington consensus.

For these reasons there has been a growing call for a new Bretton Woods agreement, one that would take into account the decline of the dollar and instead restore fixed rates, but this time based upon a basket of reserve currencies representing the multipolar economy. Maynard Keynes who was the key British negotiator at Bretton Woods and of the formation of what would become the IMF and World Bank, was critical of its establishment on the basis of the USD as the sole exchange and reserve currency and had proposed an ICU, many functions of which were ultimately filled at first on a dollar-basis through the IMF, but also with the eventual problems that he predicted. The inherent problem in the IMF was, as he pointed out, that as soon after the US lost its trade surplus, the coherency of the USD as the reserve currency within the informal regime, would dissolve with it. As the physical economies in the developing world indeed developed, this trade surplus would naturally evaporate, as Keynes predicted and as indeed happened.

The Oslo talks indeed spell the end for what can be termed the Venezuelan opposition, at least that part of it which is simply a proxy of US neoliberal aims in the Bolivarian republic. While the Oslo process will not solve the entire problem of the decline of the USD, nor will it of course ultimately solve the decline of US military power and its ability to effect supply-chain security and gunboat diplomacy, it is key and critical in that it is representative and reflective of this overall general trend and process underway

The efforts of the US government to manufacture a “parallel state”, and succeed in regime change, have failed and show no signs of succeeding. This has given extra weight to the multipolar, multilateral side of this equation which the EU can now heavily lean on.

What is on the agenda now is that the international community has shown its resolve and capacity to solve problems of an international scope in a manner not only excluding the desire of the United States, but in a controversy in which the US has placed itself in the middle of; where matters of dominance, prestige, and the collapse of the US as an empire have all come to be finally revealed and shown for what they are.

The pyramid of financial power

It is clear today that a new structure is being built in the world alongside the state machine that has existed for centuries and represents national sovereignty, and this structure is designed to gradually replace nation states. It is called a world government and the supports of the structure are central banks. The structure is in the form of a pyramid. At the top is the US Federal Reserve System, which issues dollars that acquired the status of a global currency 72 years ago at the Bretton Woods Conference.

The next layer of the pyramid is made up of central banks that issue reserve currencies. These are first and foremost the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan. The layer below consists of central banks in the eurozone, which kind of act as ECB shareholders (chief among these is the Bundesbank and the Bank of France). It also includes the central banks of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some Scandinavian countries. At the base of the pyramid are the vast majority of the other central banks in the world, which are such in name only. In practice, they are ‘currency boards’ that issue national currencies by purchasing US dollars or other reserve currencies. These ‘national’ currencies are really just repainted Federal Reserve dollars. This entire network of central banks is presided over by the US Federal Reserve System and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. The BIS is a kind of private club for central banks that was established back in 1930 and played a not insignificant role in the build up to and unleashing of the Second World War. 

Central banks may have the status of public sector organisations, private or mixed (public-private). The form of ownership has absolutely no effect on their ‘independence’. The US Federal Reserve System, for example, is a closed corporation. The Bank of England and the Bank of France used to be privately owned, but were later nationalised. The central banks of Japan and Italy are organisations with mixed ownership. Every year, the central banks expand their range of functions and powers. Many of them are becoming ‘financial mega-regulators’ that are usurping control over the economy. 

Some of the events taking place in the world can only be understood in light of the fact that central banks have immunity that protects them from any attempts by the state to encroach upon their ‘special’ status.

Slovenia puts the ECB in its place

On 7 July, global news agencies circulated two stories. The first came from the BBC and the second from Reuters. The headline of the BBC news item was «Argentina: Former leader Cristina Fernandez has assets frozen», while Reuters published its article under the headline: «ECB threatens legal action against Slovenia after police raid». At first glance, there does not seem to be any connection between the two stories, but a connection does nevertheless exist.

In 2013, one of the leading private banks in Slovenia found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. There was a possibility that the bank’s collapse would bring down the country’s entire banking system. The government of Slovenia, which is a member of both the European Union and the Eurozone, did not receive adequate financial support from Brussels and was forced to bail out its own banks, giving them more than €3 billion from the state budget. The distribution of public money took place on the basis of recommendations and suggestions prepared by the Central Bank of Slovenia. And now three years later, compelling evidence has emerged that casts doubt on whether the Central Bank provided the government with an objective picture of the financial position of individual banks in the country’s credit system. There is a suspicion that some of the information the Central Bank of Slovenia gave to the government was corrupt. Slovenian police have searched the offices of the Central Bank and seized a number of documents that compromise the governor and senior officials of the Bank of Slovenia.

And all of a sudden, the actions of the Slovenian police have sparked a violent reaction from the European Central Bank. ECB President Mario Draghi said that he deplored the seizure of property and information, referring to it as a violation of the ECB’s legal privileges and immunities and calling on European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to look into the situation. Mario Draghi has also sent a letter to the Slovenian State Prosecutor General that says: «Seized equipment contains ECB information and such information is protected under directly applicable primary EU law». The European Central Bank also threatened Slovenia with legal action (although the case will obviously be filed with the supranational European Court of Justice rather than the national court of Slovenia). It turns out that any attempts by national authorities to monitor and control their central banks are considered to be an encroachment upon the ‘independence’ of the European Central Bank. The incident in Slovenia has made it clear to the authorities of all Eurozone countries that their ‘national’ central banks are actually nothing more than subsidiaries of the supranational ECB.

The money bosses take revenge on a woman

Now let us look at events in Argentina. A court in Buenos Aires has decided to freeze the assets of former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has been accused of artificially propping up the exchange rate of the Argentine peso in the final months of her presidency. Following orders from Kirchner, the central bank allegedly sold US dollars on the futures market at «an artificially low price to the detriment of the country’s financial system». The tailor-made nature of the affair is beyond doubt. For many years, this tenacious woman has withstood the onslaught from the US and the money bosses in order to protect Argentina’s sovereignty.

Firstly, she resisted the attempts of ‘financial vultures’ to undermine the debt restructuring agreements that Argentina reached with its main creditors in the early 2000s. The ‘financial vultures’ (several speculative investment funds) that had not signed restructuring agreements began to take action through the courts of New York, achieving full repayment of Argentine debt securities that they had been able to buy on the market for next to nothing. This created a precedent allowing global sovereign debt restructuring agreements to be undermined. It also created a precedent for the blatant pressuring of foreign states using the decisions of courts belonging to other jurisdictions (courts that do not even formally have the status of an international court). Here Cristina Fernández de Kirchner found herself on the frontline of the battle against legal imperialism.

Secondly, Cristina Kirchner created a precedent a few years ago that was not to the money bosses’ liking. As head of state, she decided to place the Central Bank of Argentina under her control. In 2010, she needed the central bank’s currency reserves to pay the country’s external debt. The amount needed was $6.6 billion, which was about a seventh of the central bank’s international reserves and half of the total amount of external sovereign debt. Covering government debts by obtaining foreign loans would make the country even more dependent on global moneylenders, but by using the central bank’s reserves, Argentina would be able to completely rid itself of its foreign debt burden in a relatively short space of time. It is not difficult to guess how the money bosses reacted to this brave woman’s endeavour. The then president of the Central Bank of Argentina, Martin Redrado, refused to obey Kirchner’s orders and she signed a decree for his dismissal. In response, Redrado appealed to the court in Buenos Aires and just a few days later (what efficiency!), the Argentine justice system annulled the president’s decree. The judge who presided over the case justified his decision by saying that «the president does not have the authority to dismiss the head of the Central Bank».

Surprisingly, as well as deciding to reinstate Redrado as central bank president, the court also demanded that the Argentine President’s decision to use the central bank’s international reserves to pay the country’s debt be revoked. 

Central Bank President Martin Redrado was finally dismissed, but the decision prohibing the use of the central bank’s international reserves was upheld. It is interesting that in January 2010, accounts held by Argentina’s Central Bank in US banks were frozen by a court in New York. The decision was made based on the requirements of the holders of Argentina’s external debt. Officially, the decision of the New York court was not linked to Kirchner’s decision, but experts familiar with the rules of the game in the global financial system believe it was a warning to the Argentine president. It is only in light of this story that one can understand why former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is now being persecuted. The money bosses are trying to completely destroy all traces of the ‘Argentine precedent’ that allows for a central bank to be removed from under the control of the global financial International.

 The decisions taken at the conference laid down the foundations of the global financial system. The system used gold and dollar as standards, Washington was obliged to exchange the yellow metal for greenbacks. In the 1970s the Bretton Woods system became a thing of the past in favor of the Jamaica system based on dollar banknotes. The dollar was backed up by black gold and the system was often called an oil-dollar order.

 No matter that, the Bretton Woods has not completely faded. The IMF was developed as a permanent international body. The summary of agreements states, «The nations should consult and agree on international monetary changes which affect each other. They should outlaw practices which are agreed to be harmful to world prosperity, and they should assist each other to overcome short-term exchange difficulties». The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was created to speed up post-war reconstruction, to aid political stability, and to foster peace. This was to be fulfilled through the establishment of programs for reconstruction and development. Since a long time the banks have been facing great difficulties. The International Monetary Fund is going through crisis too. As 70 years since Bretton Woods have passed, a heavy blow was delivered against international financial institutions. The attack came from the resort city of Fortaleza in Brazil.

Although the theme of the summit was “social inclusion”, at the top of the agenda is the creation of two new entities controlled entirely by the five BRICS members. The Bank is setup to foster greater financial and development cooperation among the five emerging markets. It would be headquartered in Shanghai, China and the first chief executive will come from India. The New Development Bank (NDB) will fund development projects independent of the US-controlled World Bank, and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) will provide relief from the austere conditions and requirements of the IMF. The decision making process had been in works for a long time. The controversial issues had been settled before the summit. Everything had been prepared in advance, so Fortaleza was the place where the ceremony took place. Media often call the new institutions in a more simple way – the Bank of BRICS and the Reserve Currency Fund of BRICS.

To be initially capitalized at $50 billion ($10 billion being contributed by each of the five countries), the Bank will have an authorized capital of $100 billion, and cater to the infrastructure and development funding needs of the five countries. It’s open for all United Nations members but the BRICS share is to never get lower than 55%. The control stock will always belong to the five founding members. The formation of authorized is to take a few years. The capitalized and contributed shares will be equal with any BRICS member enjoying equal rights as a member of board.

Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa will provide 10 representatives to make up the bulk of professional staff to make the Bank function. All the decisions will be taken by the special majority making up four out of five BRICS members or two thirds (in case the membership will be extended). The Bank may become operational in 2015 to fund the joint projects of the BRICS group members. One of the first projects to be funded may be GLONASS – the Russia-produced global navigational system. The stationing GLONASS sites on the territories of BRICS members will make the system more competitive and reliable. BRICS has a unique advantage – the members are located on the territories of four continents.

 Now about the reserve pool. The idea was first brought up at the June 2012 BRICS summit in Los Cabos. The BRICS will also set up a $100 billion (73.5 billion euros) joint US dollar currency reserve pool called the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), in order to provide emergency cash to BRICS countries faced with short-term currency crises or balance-of-payments problems, as Russian President Putin told reporters in Brazil. The CRA’s mission parallels that of the IMF. It will provide emergency funds to governments faced with a sudden shortage of hard currency – especially of US dollars, the dominant currency in global trade and finance. Developing-country financial crises can occur when international investors suddenly pull large amounts of hard currency out of a country because of worries over its banking system’s solvency, a change in interest rates, or some other financial factor. Crises can also result from a sudden drop in the price of a developing country’s main export. For example, a drop in the price of oil or copper can lead to balance-of-payments problems. Vladimir Putin said he is concerned over the policies of Western states which don’t stand out for long-term vision or thorough assessment.

 The CRA and the IMF may have a lot of things in common, but there are differences. The International Monetary Fund is an international financial organization with its own capital, Charter and HQ. The CRA is just a mechanism with no headquarters at this stage. The $100 billion BRICS contingency reserve arrangement (CRA) will be raised from the member countries’ central bank reserves while capital for the group’s development bank will come from national budgets. The reserve fund is being established in order to promptly react to the situation on currency markets. Central banks will be able to conduct swap operations if necessary. It is designed to cushion short-term liquidity pressure and promote financial stability. The individual commitments of the five nations to the BRICS CRA will be as follows: China – $41 billion; Brazil, India, and Russia – $18 billion each; and South Africa – $5 billion. The credit decision will be based on national coefficient or a multiplier. In case of China it could be 0, 5. It means if needed China may get not $41 billion but a half. In case of South Africa the multiplier is 2. In other cases it is 1. The CRA assets will be collected from gold-reserves of the member-nations. It’s nothing more than just a framework agreement that was signed in Brazil. The agreement to be put in practice will be concluded later between the countries’ central banks.

 Assessing the decisions taken in Brazil, some world media outlets compare the event with the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. Perhaps there is some exaggeration here. It’s hard to say how consistent the group members will be complying with the decisions taken in Brazil. The West’s response is not known as yet. It could be positive or negative, even aggressive. We believe the creation of Contingent Reserve Arrangement was another signal to the West, especially to Washington. It says the time has come to launch the process of reforming the International Monetary Fund. As is known, On December 15, 2010, the Board of Governors, the Fund’s highest decision-making body, completed the 14^th General Review of Quotas which envisioned double quotas from approximately SDR 238.5 billion to approximately SDR 477 billion (close to US$737 billion at current exchange rates), shift more than 6 percent of quota shares from over-represented to under-represented member countries, shift more than 6 percent of quota shares to dynamic emerging market and developing countries (EMDCs), significantly realign quota shares. A comprehensive review of the current quota formula was completed in January 2013, when the Executive Board submitted its report to the Board of Governors. The outcome of this review will form a basis for the Executive Board to agree on a new quota formula as part of the 15^th Review. The Board of Governors has set a deadline of January 2015 for the completion of the 15^th General Review of Quotas. All the countries have already ratified the provisions of the 14^th Review except the United States. Washington blocked the process of IMF reform to avoid the loss on control exercised by the United States over the Fund. As of now, the United States holds the 15% blocking package, the US capital share is about 17%. Many American congressmen ask why we should change the 14^th Review if it may result in out loss of control over the Fund.

Washington will have to transfer over 60 billion dollars to the International Monetary Fund. President Obama is trying to push the ratification through because without it the Fund will not be able to provide funds for Ukraine. At the same time the ratification will strengthen BRICS and their allies in the International Monetary Fund. Everybody understands well there is a link between the issue of IMF reform and Ukraine, though American politicians have different views on what the implications are going to be like.

The Fortaleza decision to create the BRICS CRA is letting Washington know – go on, ratify the 14th Review of Quotas otherwise will swing over to an alternative currency fund with the participation of many willing besides BRICS. Argentina, for instance.

The expert community introduced the idea of a Bretton Woods II at the end of the 20th century. The Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee, headed by a certain Marc Uzan, was set up in 1994 on the back of the conference’s 50 year anniversary. At an official level, the idea of a Bretton Woods II was first expressed by the Italian Senator Oskar Peterlini. At the height of the 2009 financial crisis, Peterlini officially presented a «Motion for the reorganisation of the international currency system: the new Bretton Woods» to the Italian Senate. The document was approved by a large number of deputies in the upper house. Although the document mentioned nothing about a return to gold, it pointed out the need to control the issue of money, and the need to link it to real assets and commodities rather than financial assets. Attention was also focused on the fact that the world needs a financial system with fixed (constant) exchange rates and restrictions on the free cross-border movement of venture capital.

At the G20 meetings in Washington in November 2008 and London in April 2009, where ways out of the global financial crisis were discussed, the expression «Bretton Woods II» was also heard more than once. In the midst of the financial crisis, radical proposals were put forward at G20, G8, G7 and other similar forums on the restructuring of the global monetary and financial system. There was also talk of the need to convene a global «New Bretton Woods» conference at the UN, where it was expected that a number of important international agreements would be entered into, including: 1) a Global Economic Charter based on the proposals of German Chancellor Angela Merkel; 2) a Global Energy Charter put forward by the leaders of net energy-exporting countries; and 3) major amendments to the UN Charter, including the establishment of a Financial Security Council. As soon as the threat of the global financial crisis had passed, however, political leaders immediately forgot about the «New Bretton Woods» projects.

At the end of the 20th century, the illusion emerged that the world might become unipolar and be controlled by Washington, and Pax Americana was built under the guise of globalisation. Today, however, Washington is losing its influence in the world, and chances are there will be no repetition of Bretton Woods.

George Soros’ New Bretton Woods

At the same time, it is possible to talk about a new Bretton Woods as the resuscitation of the project put forward by John Keynes 70 years ago that gained little support from those present. The most well-known and open supporter of this Bretton Woods alternative is financial speculator George Soros. Back in November 2009, at the peak of the global financial crisis, the billionaire announced the preparation of a «New Bretton Woods» conference, and in April 2011, Soros made sure the conference took place. Details about it are few and far between. Soros paid $50 million to assemble around 200 academics, businessmen and state leaders in New Hampshire under the aegis of his Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET). The meeting included such well-known figures as the former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Paul Volcker, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nobel Laureate and a former vice president of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz, and renowned economist and director of The Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs. Soros’ event at Bretton Woods was as secret as the meeting of the Bilderberg Group. It is known, however, that the event took place under the catchword of Keynesian economics. The particular role of China as a pole of the world economy and global politics was discussed, along with the need to move to a supranational currency, establish a global emission centre (global central bank), and restructure the global financial system.

George Soros as a mouthpiece of the Rothschild clan

It is well known that George Soros is a protégé of the Rothschilds, their mouthpiece. Through the public statements and actions of this financial speculator, renowned for his scandalous behaviour, it is possible to put together some idea of his bosses. The Rothschilds are absolute cosmopolitans, they do not hold on to any kind of national identity, unlike the Rockefellers whom America needs, because the printing press and military-industrial complex it is called upon to protect are located in America. In terms of Soros’ understanding of a global currency, therefore, then it is more likely a combination of a supranational currency and gold.

Soros has repeatedly declared that he sees China as the model for a new global financial order in place of the US. Soros has referred to the US as a burden on the global economy because of the falling dollar, noting the need for a new global currency in the form of the IMF’s special drawing rights. Soros is sometimes regarded as an advocate of John Keynes’ ideas, but this misguided thinking arises from the fact that Soros is a critic of the market, believing it cannot be a self-regulating mechanism. In truth, Soros is against the state and state regulation. He is an advocate of regulating the economy by means of major corporations and banks. Such regulation may be supplemented by regulation from supranational bodies. The institutes of the European Union, which Soros also had a hand in creating, may serve as examples of such bodies. Soros does not like the European Central Bank, the European Commission and other bodies of European integration because they provide some kind of economic efficiency and improve people’s lives; he likes them because they are bringing the death of nation states closer, thus clearing a space for monopolies and banks.

George Soros makes no secret of the fact that he does not like America. Not because it wages destructive wars around the world, or because of the country’s huge social polarisation, or because its prisons contin more than two million people, with a further four or five millions American who were sentenced to imprisonment currently at large because the country does not have enough prisons, or because the US organised an all-out surveillance of every telephone conversation in America. Soros does not like America because it still retains far too many attributes of a state. This is why Soros was one of Obama’s main sponsors during the pre-election presidential campaign. This also explains what initially seem to be certain illogical decisions and acts of the White House’s current occupant that are troubling the real patriots of America…

Properly speaking, Soros is an advocate of financial capitalism. Exactly the same capitalism that Austrian socialist Rudolf Hilferding, who took financial capitalism to mean bankocracy, or the dictatorship of banks, wrote about a century ago. This model of society is extremely reminiscent of a concentration camp.

While on the subject of Soros, one more Rothschild figure comes to mind – former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Like Soros, he also dislikes America and the American dollar, and is working on reducing the role of the green paper. Among other things, it is well known that just before military action began against Libya in 2011, Strauss-Kahn met with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and gave his support to the idea of introducing a regional currency – the gold dinar. This naturally displeased those in charge of the Federal Reserve System’s printing presses and served as the reason for the scandalous resignation of Strauss-Kahn and, slightly later, NATO aggression against Libya.

The new world financial order «in a broad cultural context»

The Rothchilds do not like national currencies, which they see as an anachronism of the 20th century; they interfere with the creation of a world government. In order to get rid of national currencies more quickly, the nation state needs to be destroyed, and to accomplish this, every cultural and moral foundation of society must be undermined as much as possible. Observing Soros is evidence that the billionaire is promoting the cultural degeneration of mankind. Soros supports the rights of the «oppressed minorities» to abortion, atheism, the legalisation of drugs, sexual enlightenment, euthanasia, feminism, single-sex marriages and so on. He is in favour of globalisation in all its manifestations, mass immigration, and birth control. He promotes these ideas around the world through his Open Society Institute, which has branches in 60 countries (total expenditure on the institute’s activities is nearly $600 million a year). There are many other political, financial and media veterans who help Soros with his propaganda work, including the former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Jacques Attali. The striking similarity between the philosophies of Soros and Attali is astonishing. Both are cosmopolitans to the core, both put their trust in the organisational role of banks, both fiercely attack what there is left of culture and religion, both talk about the need for a global central bank, a global armed forces and so forth. It feels as if they have a common boss and client.

I do not know whether the conversations that took place at the Mount Washington hotel in April 2011 went beyond the usual agenda of global financial forums, but there is no doubt that the ‘broad-minded’ Soros focussed on destroying the foundations of traditional society. In his opinion piece published six months before the New Bretton Woods conference, Soros wrote: «Reorganising the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system.» The billionaire is expressing the world view of his bosses for whom money, finance, exchange rates, gold fixing, securities, loans, derivatives, exchanges and other attributes of the modern financial system are just the means, not the goal. The goal is world power.