Needed - A new Bretton Woods Agreement.

A year into the crisis and the FT is doing a review into what happened, linked here. All who believe in individual liberties and democracies have lived through a perilous year and while the recent 15 per cent fall in the oil and gold price with a slight recovery of the dollar might be a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel, there seem many more and greater risks ahead. In a posting beneath this, made earlier in the week, I linked to a You Tube video of Republican President Richard Nixon's speech in 1971 when he scrapped the convertibility of the dollar to gold and imposed a ten per cent surcharge on imports. This bought a quarter a century of controlled depreciation of the dollar. Oil producers and other suppliers of basic commodities have now given notice that they will no longer accept ever greater quantities of potentially worthless paper in exchange for their precious and finite natural resources. Hard-working and comparatively vacation-starved US families who became used to watch their work rewards grow through their 401(k) pension schemes before the Clinton stock market bust have now watched with dismay as the alternative calculator of land and property values rapidly head south as accentuated by the plight of the formerly solid institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The crying need for a stable calculator for value for America's hard-working families could surely not be any clearer or yet more urgent than with the coming election. In spite of the WTO, Nixon's precedent of a temporary import surcharge will not be something to be easily ignored. George W Bush, whose Presidency already appears likely to be viewed by history as far more successful than contemporary pundits might ever have imagined now has the chance to leave a legacy of a secure and strengthened dollar as his overarching achievement for posterity. Fixing a value for the dollar requires no international agreement, it can be accomplished by the best brains and economists from across the parties, political spectrum and diverse interests of the nation. With modern vast number crunching computing power it could be as complex and regularly reviewed as any might wish or as simple and eternal as the value of gold or the wheat yield of land. Anything is possible - anything is essential. New Hampshire is the perfect setting in Fall for such a conclave. Lock them up in Bretton Woods if Bush might so wish, but I would suggest the recently refurbished Wentworth Hotel (golf and sailing on hand) on Newcastle Island near Portsmouth NH, there they may not just observe the splendour of natures change from green to red to gold, but also be reminded by the sea of their duty not just to the citizens of the US, but also to the world and the nearby presence of the US Navy Yard will recall the reality of US power in its nuclear submarines, aircraft carrier battle fleets and giant superiority in space technology. Restoring the power and strength of the dollar seems as nothing when recognising the true underlying power of the United States of America which, of course, is bedded in its democracy. The stunning discovery of water on Mars by US scientists just this summer surely must highlight once again the stupidity of leaving the dollar, the currency of such an innovative nation, to drift and dangle. Either or both Presidential candidates could endorse the consensus concept of this Economic Conclave, which should be compulsorily achieved by an end October deadline. Congress would then have the utmost legitimacy for implementation early next year. By the Autumn of 2010 other Central bankers could attend a second Bretton Woods Conference to fix their currencies against the new dollar bench-mark, whether they do so or not is irrelevant as the spendthrift and deceitful politicians of the world will once again have a benchmark via which they can be exposed.