The essence of the Bretton Woods system can be explained in one sentence: the currency of the whole world is locked in the dollar, and the dollar is locked in gold. The U.S. government promised the whole world that every 35 US dollars could be exchanged for one ounce of gold, and the United States at that time could be said to be complacent, because at this time, the United States had the largest gold reserves in the world, and 80% of the gold in the world was in the hands of the Americans, and at the same time, the United States also had the most powerful production capacity and military machine in the world.

By creating the Bretton Woods system, the Americans established the hegemony of the dollar in one fell swoop. This position lasted until the early 70s of the 20 th century, and before that, the United States was the richest, most stable, and most economically developing country in the world.

However, flowers are not red for a hundred days, and people are not good for a thousand days. Americans' good days come to an end. The Americans, who had returned home on the Korean battlefield, did not accept the lessons of that war.

In 1959, the Americans were involved in the Vietnam War. After nearly 17 years of fighting in Vietnam, by the end of the war in 1975, when they hastily evacuated Saigon, the Americans had shot down tens of thousands of planes and lost the lives of nearly 50,000 officers and soldiers. The war cost the United States $800 billion, which is equivalent to more than $3 trillion now. Correspondingly, the gold reserves of the United States were also dwindling, and by 1971 the war was not over, and the United States was already stretched thin and did not have enough money to spend. At that time, Americans could not implement "moderate monetary easing" and turn on the money printing press to print dollars like they did today in response to the financial crisis. Because, there is the "Bretton Woods system" lying there. So that the Americans can't do what they want, you can't print enough dollars without enough gold! Because you have a commitment to the whole world. You are the base currency of the world, and you have to keep the dollar stable. This has put the United States in an unprecedented predicament.

The war continues. Gold reserves are dwindling day by day, and it is impossible to print more dollars, and the Americans have no other way but to lose their trust in the world.

In the early seventies of the twentieth century, then US President Richard Nixon announced that the dollar would be decoupled from gold. This breach of trust means that the United States can print dollars at will, free from the shackles of gold. In the past, it used to take an ounce of gold for every $35 printed, but now, at least theoretically, you can print as much as you want! But the Americans are not fools. It's not foolish enough to think that just printing money will solve the problem. The Americans, of course, understand that printing too much money is digging their own grave. When you devalue your own money to nothing, your country is doomed.

So the U.S. government paid people to do a research report to see what impact the dollar from gold would have on the U.S. What will be the impact on the economy of the world? Half a year later, the research report "The Impact of Gold Demonetization" was released. The researcher's name is Michael? Hudson, a young economist with a conscience, warned the U.S. government in his report that the dollar is decoupled from gold. It is good for the United States in a short period of time, because the United States can print more money when the whole world has not come to its senses, and use paper money without gold endorsement to take advantage of the whole world. But in the long run, this is by no means a good thing for the United States and the whole world. Especially for the United States, it is undoubtedly to drink water to quench thirst.

When the U.S. government got the report, it was ecstatic. If you get a treasure. It's like an initiation, and it's like an enlightenment! They simply ignore Michael? Hudson's warning. The report on Mai's was used in the opposite direction. In the view of these U.S. economic policymakers, doing so would be beneficial to the United States in the short term. Why not turn it into a long-term benefit for Americans to enjoy forever? Of course, this first requires the dollar, which has completely turned into a green paper after decoupling from gold, and still retains its credibility before the world's interface. This means that the dollar must maintain its hegemony. How can the hegemony of the dollar be maintained? The U.S. government believes that the most important is two pillars, one is the strong scientific and technological innovation of the United States. The other is the great military power of the United States. With these two pillars, the credibility of the dollar can be ensured, and the dollar can be used as a hard currency throughout the world. Americans will be able to play the magic of paper money transfer physical wealth more freely throughout the world.

But Americans are also worried that just relying on the strength of the United States itself, what if others don't buy your account? Then, after decoupling from gold, the dollar should be pegged to the most important commodities in the world to ensure that the dollar's position is as stable as a rock. The opportunity was not long in coming. On October 6, 1973, the Fourth Middle East War broke out. At first, the Egyptians and Syrians attacked on two fronts, taking Israel by surprise, but soon the tide of the war reversed, and Israel gained the upper hand.

A victorious war ended in a forced truce, much to the dismay of the Arab world. The oil-owned Arabs decided that what they could not get on the battlefield would come from elsewhere. As a result, OPEC – the International Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries – decided to use oil as a weapon to raise oil prices to hit the West. This method was indeed more effective than war, and soon the West could not bear it.

According to the intelligence report, Simon, then Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, secretly flew to Saudi Arabia to meet with Saudi Arabia's oil minister and the first OPEC secretary general, and told him, "We don't care how high you want to raise oil prices, but if you want the Americans to be your enemy, you must accept a condition, that is, the world's oil transactions will be settled in dollars." ”

The Saudi Arabian oil minister, like the rest of the world, was unaware of the Americans' far-reaching intentions, so he agreed to the Americans' request, and from then on, the world's oil transactions were pegged to the dollar, and the dollar's credit was firmly linked to the world's energy demand for the next 40 years.

At this point, the new type of empire designed by the Americans gradually began to show its outline, which is the financial colonial empire that has never appeared in the history of human empires. The Americans have discovered that a more clever way than the stupid practice of the Germans in the past to fight for the living space of a country should be to obediently make them hand over their wealth in a way that the world is almost imperceptible, without creating hatred. To that end. There is no better way to bring the world into the financial system of the United States. Then, let the wealth roll into Americans' pockets like unscrewing a tap on the tap.

"Globalization" is not a historical necessity. It's an elaborate design by the Americans—the answer that the whole world has woken up to.

In order to achieve this grand strategic goal, the United States needs to advance changes in the global economy to adapt to American appetites. The first thing to complete is the global industrial division of labor, the so-called globalization. In order to build momentum, and more importantly, in order for American-style globalization to be universally recognized by the people of the earth, there must be a theory to raise the flag for it, and for this reason, the Americans have chosen the theory of free market economics as a leading theory. Paving the way for U.S.-led globalization.

In order to make the global industrial division of labor seem reasonable and completely in line with economic laws, the Americans used the theory of comparative advantage to divide the whole world into two parts: one is the United States, and the Americans believe that its advantage lies in the production of dollars; The other piece is the whole world.

What are the advantages of the whole world? For example, the Chinese, your comparative advantage is that you have a lot of cheap labor. You can only take advantage of this to your advantage. This reason is simply convincing, through the theory of comparative advantage, the United States will always be at the top of the biological chain of the global economy. A country like China, which has a large number of cheap labor, has no choice but to develop labor-intensive industries, and irrevocably and forever resides at the lower end of the entire economic biological chain, and so on in other countries. This is how the global industrial division of labor has been completed.

The Americans are on one side and the world on the other, and the Americans are responsible for the production of dollars. And the whole world is responsible for producing products exchanged for dollars, which is the essence of the great division of labor in the global industry dominated by the United States. Since then, the wave of globalization has swept the world.

The United States uses its own financial system. The result of this trading model in which the United States exports dollars to the world and the world provides products to the United States has resulted in the rapid concentration of global wealth in the United States, which is the fundamental reason why the GDP of the United States has only reached 7 trillion US dollars at its peak in the more than 200 years before 1990, and in the last 20 years, the GDP has doubled to 14 trillion.

Of course, the Americans know better than the rest of the world that the wealth amassed in this way is not enough to rely on the global industrial division of labor, and even the pegging of oil to the US dollar is not enough, but also needs a very powerful means, without this means, the United States is not enough to snatch so much wealth from the hands of the world, and this means is the world's first military strength.

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Natasha looked at the materials in her hand, but still didn't understand a lot, "Commander, but does this have anything to do with us?" ”

"The economic aspect will definitely have an impact in the future, but it will not play a big role, and Somalia will not need to import industrial products in the future, but to expand the export market, and the global economy of the dollar will not have a great impact on us." Speaking of this, Li Lan's voice changed and said: "However, for this negotiation, the US side will not let go so easily. ”

"For what?" Natasha had just said a question, and then she was surprised: "Is it oil?" ”

"There is nothing wrong with it, the United States is fighting Somalia, to put it bluntly, for oil! Whether it is oil under Somali soil or Saudi Arabia's oil waterways, it is all related to oil. Li Lan nodded and replied with great certainty.

Combined with the detailed information on this information, it is not difficult to understand.

After four wars in 20 years, Americans only wanted oil to be pegged to the dollar.

Why did the Americans fight the Iraq War? Answer: For oil. So, the next question is: Why did the United States not take a barrel of oil from Iraq for free after it occupied Iraq? Why do ordinary people in the United States have to endure the torment of high oil prices with the rest of the world? This is a question that many people are puzzled with, but the answer has been given earlier in this article, and that is that the global oil trade is pegged to the US dollar.

What was the first thing that came when the United States took Iraq? Global oil prices soared. What does it mean that oil prices are soaring and trades are settled in US dollars? It means that the surge in oil prices has boosted the global demand for dollars, that is, the Americans have hit the global demand for dollars through war. Before the Iraq war, a barrel of oil was $38, and after the war was close to $150, it is equivalent to a war that nearly triples the demand for dollars. When the world needs more dollars to buy oil, the happiest thing is of course the US government, except for the oil-producing countries. Because in this way, the U.S. government can start the money printing press and print more dollars in the name of providing liquidity to the whole world, and the U.S. government is not a philanthropist, it will not give you dollars for nothing, you have to exchange your products, and thus once again join the game of physical goods for green paper. At this time, the US government's money printing behavior can be said to be justified, and there is no need to brazenly and dishonestly issue additional dollars when there is no demand in the whole world, as in today's financial crisis.

In this way, more dollars go to other countries, to oil-producing countries, and to countries that need to buy oil. What can you do with so many dollars in the hands of these countries? In addition to being happy as a symbol of wealth, the prospect of turning into scrap paper is worrying, because the dollar is depreciating at a rapid rate, depreciating every day, turning into scrap paper every day, and your only option at this time is the choice that the Americans have long prepared for you: buy the US Treasury bonds.

The purchase of US Treasury bonds has brought a huge amount of dollars back to the United States, and has also made the United States the largest debtor country in the world. So, why does the United States need to let the dollars that flow to the whole world flow back to the United States in the form of buying US Treasury bonds? In other words, the United States, which has almost no savings rate, must always maintain a surplus in the capital account, and the amount of this surplus was about $700 billion a year around 2001, that is, a net inflow of $2 billion per day into the United States. Therefore, the United States needs a large amount of world capital to flow back to the United States in order to maintain the liquidity of its normal economic life; otherwise, it will be difficult for the majority of Americans to continue their good life of swiping their cards and overdrafts, so the United States is not afraid of a current account deficit, but a capital account deficit.

In order to maintain a surplus under the capital account, the United States will not hesitate to use war means to undermine the investment environment of other countries and regions, and drive dollars back to the United States like a flock of sheep. So, on the surface, both Iraq wars were about oil, but in fact they were mostly about the dollar. Because as long as there is a war in the oil-producing regions, the price of oil will rise, and the demand for the dollar will also rise. That way, Americans can start printing money, print more dollars, and bring back more physical wealth from around the world, and that's it. (To be continued......)