On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 2:29 PM José María Mateos <ch...@rinzewind.org> wrote:
> > > https://wtfhappenedin1971.com > > Based on the page contents, what happened is that there was no Bitcoin. > It's an interesting remark! But so is this wikipedia page: "The Nixon shock was a series of economic measures undertaken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971, in response to increasing inflation, the most significant of which were wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. While Nixon's actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, the suspension of one of its key components effectively rendered the Bretton Woods system inoperative. While Nixon publicly stated his intention to resume direct convertibility of the dollar after reforms to the Bretton Woods system had been implemented, all attempts at reform proved unsuccessful. By 1973, the Bretton Woods system was replaced de facto by the current regime based on freely floating fiat currencies." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock ) Of course the wage and price freezes didn't last long. However, the end of Bretton Woods and the free-floating currency regime had an unexpected result, which was to make US capital and bond markets the new center of the world financial system. Worried about which way your currency might float? Head to New York with your money. That's what people from around the world started to do. Inflation was another, this time expected consequence of Nixon's move. By 1980 it had got so intense that the Fed under Paul Volcker decided to crush it with interest rates that killed the remaining mom and pop businesses and cleared the way for a new round of corporate consolidation and expansion (aka globalization). Reagan set out in parallel to crush unions (PATCO) while Thatcher did the same in the UK (miners), making sure that wages would never rise again. And they had a secret weapon: if wages do start to rise, move operations offshore. After all, you can pay everything in dollars, anywhere in the world. The creation of the NYC/London as the twin centers of fully globalized financial markets operating in dollars, plus the long-term suppression of unions and of wages, explains WTF happened imho. But there may be other angles on this story. As to what Bitcoin would've done about it, I'm in the dark! best, Brian
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
