Swiss and the Spanish were right behind them. The only people who were playing ball with this were the Japanese and the Germans. Always. Because, well, they needed the nuclear umbrella. They were relying on military protection, so they played ball because they were dependent on us militarily. And then the Brits didn't mess up the system because they had a worse problem than we did. There were a lot of sterling claims out there that couldn't be converted to gold. But, yeah, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, to some extent, the Swiss, it was just a run on the bank, except the bank was Fort Knox. The gold was flying off the shelves. In 1950, the United States had 20,000 tons of gold. By 1970, we had 9,000 tons of gold. And we said, where did that 11,000 tons go? Well, it went to our trading partners. But the pace was accelerating. We would have been out of gold within a year or two at the most. And Nixon knew that. But what he thought they were doing was shutting the window (50/98)
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