Nixon shock and the rise of America
America (the United States of America) is a superpower in the world. It is not the nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of World War II (1945) that gave America the superpower status. The main player is the "Nixon Shock." On August 15, 1971, President Richard M Nixon announced his new economic policy, a program known colloquially as the “Nixon Shock,” the initiative marked the beginning of the end for the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates established at the end of World War II. Under the Bretton Woods system, the external values of foreign currencies were fixed in relation to the U.S. dollar, whose value was in turn expressed in gold at the congressionally-set price of $35 per ounce. By the 1960s, a surplus of U.S. dollars caused by foreign aid, military spending, and foreign investment threatened this system, as the United States did not have enough gold to cover the volume of dollars in worldwide circulation at the rate of $35 per ounce; as a result, the doll...