Irwin Stelzer - October 19, 2008

Politics may make strange bedfellows, but economic crises make even stranger ones. Gordon Brown, a free trader, now finds that Nicolas Sarkozy, an arch-protectionist, has virtues he had not previously noticed. It seems that they are united by three things. First, they believe, or at least are pretending that they believe, that the current ills originated in the United States. You might remember: these are the same United States whose entrepreneurship Chancellor Brown lauded to all who would listen, before becoming prime minister and slipping easily into the anti-American mode that now dominates his public and private discourse.

Second, Brown and Sarkozy, along with their EU partners, believe that now is the time to put the former hegemon in its place. America, they believe, is paralysed by the lame-duck status of its president. It will, they reason, be forced to go along with any European proposals for what is variously called a “new financial architecture” and a “new world order”. The joy on the faces of EU leaders as they gather for their conferences can be seen in news photos. Never mind that the banking systems of their countries are on the verge of collapse, or that they are headed for a recession deeper and longer than the one the United States will suffer. Now is their chance to do things that the Americans might not like, but can’t stop.

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J.D. Seagraves - Oct 20, 2008

On October 13, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a new-world financial order. “We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age,” Brown said. “We must have a new Bretton Woods.”

Brown’s statement echoed the sentiments of French and EU president Nicolas Sarkozy, who on September 26 said, “We must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods.”

So is a new “Bretton Woods” a good idea? Before we can answer that question, we need to take a look at the original Bretton Woods System, which was the world’s first fully negotiated international monetary order. What inspired global leaders to create it, and what ultimately led to its demise?

The Monetary Role of Gold

By 1900, most Western European nations had evolved from centrally planned monarchies to pseudo-capitalist republics. This resulted in the heyday of the International Gold Standard, in which market economies of the West engaged in relatively free trade, facilitated by the ultimate global currency of gold.

Gold, according to Austrian economist Carl Menger, emerged as money millennia ago. In fact, gold’s monetary nature predates the existence of the nation-state. It is “real money” in the sense that no one has to be forced to accept it: they do so willingly. And thus, gold presents a problem for nation-state governments—they can’t manipulate it as easily as paper money.

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Global Research, September 4, 2008

One should judge Nicolas Sarkozy according to his actions, and not according to his personality. Yet when his doings surprise even his own constituents, it is legitimate to take a detailed look at his biography and question the bonds that brought him to power. Thierry Meyssan has decided to write the truth about the French Republic’s president background. All the information included in this article is provable, except for two assertions signalled by the author who alone takes full responsibility.

Tired of the overextended presidencies of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, the French elected Nicolas Sarkozy counting on his energy to revitalize their country. They were hoping for a break with years of no-change and ideologies of the past. What they got instead was a break with the very principles which founded the French nation, and have been shocked by this “hyper-president”, seizing every day a new dossier, attracting towards him the right and the left wing, and tearing apart all points of reference to the point of creating a total confusion.

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