coverup as a means of overthrowing Nixon.
Then came the January [1973] Paris meeting of the International Monetary Fund.
The world monetary system was glutted with over $60 billions of incon- vertible reserves. The
world economy was technically bankrupt. It was kept out of actual bankruptcy proceedings
throughout 1972 solely by the committment of the USA to agree to some January, 1973 plan by
which most of these $60 billions would begin to become convertible. The leading suggestion wasthat the excess dollars would be gradually sopped in exchange for IMF Special Drawing Rights
(SDRs). With some such White House IMF action promised for January, 1973, the financial world
had kept itself more or less wired together by sheer political will throughout 1972.
Then, into the delicate January Paris IMF sessions stepped Mr. Nixon's representatives. Hisdelegates proceeded to break up the meeting with demands for trade and tariff concessions- a virtual (^)
declaration of trade war.
Promptly, the financial markets registered their reaction to Mr. Nixon's bungling by plunging into
crisis.
To this, Mr. Nixon shortly responded with devaluation of the dollar, a temporary expedient giving a
very brief breathing-space to get back to the work of establishing dollar convertibility. Nixon
continued his bungling, suggesting that this devaluation made conditions more favorable for
negotiating trade and tariff concessions-- more trade war.
The financiers of the world weighed Mr. Nixon's wisdom, and began selling the dollar at still-
greater discounts. Through successive crises, Mr. Nixon continued to speak only of John Connally's
Holy Remedies of trade and tariff concessions. Financiers thereupon rushed substantially out of all
currencies into such hedges as world-wide commodity speculation on a scale unprecedented inmodern history. Still, Mr. Nixon had nothing to propose on dollar convertibility- only trade wars. (^)
The US domestic economy exploded into Latin American style inflation.
General commodity speculation, reflecting a total loss of confidence in all currencies, seized upon
basic agricultural commodities-among others. Feed prices soared, driving meat, poultry, andproduce costs and prices toward the stratosphere.
It was during this period, as Nixon's credibility seemed so much less important than during late
1972, that a sudden rush of enthusiasm developed for the moral sensibilities of Chairman Sam
Ervin's Senate Select Committee. [fn 13]
As LaRouche points out, it was the leading Anglo-American financier factions who decided to
dump Nixon, and availed themselves of the pre-existing Watergate affair in order to reach their
goal. The financiers were able to implement their decision all the more easily thanks to the
numerous operatives of the intelligence community who had been embedded within the Plumbersfrom the moment of their creation in response to an explicit demand coming from George Bush's
personal mentor, Henry Kissinger.
Watergate included the option of rapid steps in the direction of a dictatorship not so much of the
military as of the intelligence community and the law enforcement agencies acting as executors ofthe will of the Wall Street circles indicated. The "Seven Days in May" overtone of Watergate, the
more or less overt break with constitutional forms and rituals was never excluded. We must recall
that the backdrop for Watergate had been provided first of all by the collapse of the international
monetary system, as made official by Nixon's austerity decrees imposing a wage and price freeze
starting on the fateful day of August 15, 1971. What followed was an attempt to run the entire US