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It’s the Worst Time to Make Money in Markets Since 1972 By Elena Popina
Market statisticians are falling over each other in 2018 to describe the pain being felt across asset classes. One venerable shop frames it this way: Things haven’t been this bad since Richard Nixon’s presidency.
I hadn't realized that Nixon also terminated agreements and imposed broad based import taxes, but that's what happened. David Frum wrote in the Atlantic:
Donald Trump is often compared to Richard Nixon in his disdain for law and ethics. The parallel applies to economics too. Nixon in 1971 quit the Bretton Woods agreement and imposed a surtax on all imports.
On 15 August 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and imposed a 10% surcharge on all dutiable imports in an effort to force other countries to revalue their currencies against the dollar. The import surcharge was lifted four months later after the Smithsonian agreement led to new exchange rate parities. This paper examines the political, economic, and legal issues surrounding this use of trade sanctions to achieve exchange rate adjustments.
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A more detailed analysis:https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/Nixon.pdf