Читать книгу Financial Cold War. A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets онлайн

102 страница из 137

This drew consternation from other countries, particularly after the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam. Among the most vocal critics was Charles de Gaulle, who complained that the dollar's supremacy allowed the Americans to indulge in costly foreign wars without having to curtail spending at home. In September 1963, he ordered the Banque de France ‘to demand from the Americans that eighty percent of what they owed us by virtue of the balance of payments should henceforth be repaid in gold’.ssss1 France subsequently went so far as to send a battleship to collect its gold from the vaults of the New York Fed.

Germany, while more circumspect in its public statements, had revalued the Deutschmark in 1961 and 1969, but continued to see speculative inflows. In May 1971, the German government decided to allow its currency to float. Although this curbed speculative flows into Germany, it did little to stem capital outflows from the US. By that year, US dollar liabilities of $70 billion were backed by just $13 billion in gold.ssss1