Bretton Woods, Nixon Closing the Gold Window, and the Fake Middle Class

• 1:03:05Tim notes how Ben Carson's sudden religious conversion in a bathroom for a couple of hours strains credibility.
• 1:03:49Carson also claimed he went after his mother with a hammer during the same speech.
• 1:04:13The post-World War II middle-class boom was not historical norm but a complete creation of that era.
• 1:04:26The Bretton Woods Agreement made the US dollar the world's reserve currency, requiring other nations to deposit their gold.
• 1:05:00For 20-30 years, the US inflated its currency while foreign nations couldn't redeem dollars for gold, effectively exploiting them.
• 1:05:49The US spent money freely on infrastructure and cheap loans, building prosperity on the backs of other countries who lost value as reserves.
• 1:06:48When nations developed economically in the late 60s and early 70s, they demanded their gold back, forcing Nixon to close the gold window.
• 1:07:21The US couldn't return the gold because inflation had depleted reserves, so Nixon simply ended redemption and screwed foreign nations.
• 1:07:46The post-war middle class prosperity was built entirely on this exploitation, and that era has now eroded.
• 1:08:28This cushy middle class was never supposed to exist; historically America had the rich and those who struggled, with no comfortable in-between.
• 1:09:06Mainstream liberals who celebrate the middle class never acknowledge it was built on exploiting foreign nations and their reserves.
• 1:09:31Tim points out the hypocrisy of claiming to be human rights activists while ignoring who makes our phones and how they're treated.
• 1:09:50People don't want to give up their comfortable lifestyles to question the systems that created them, revealing underlying selfishness.
• 1:10:03Tim considers releasing this segment as a standalone clip from the episode.

Ben CarsonBretton Woods AgreementNixonHarry Dexter WhiteDonald Trump