An unusual meeting at Saltsjöbaden

announced a second devaluation of the dollar, of 10 per cent against gold, pricing gold where it remains to this day for the Federal Reserve, at $42.22 per ounce.

At this point all the major world currencies began a process of what was called the ‘managed fl oat.’ Between February and March 1973, the value of the U.S. dollar against the German Deutschmark dropped another 40 per cent. Permanent instability had been introduced into world monetary affairs in a way not seen since the early 1930s, but this time strategists in New York, Washington and the City of London were preparing an unexpected surprise to regain the upper hand and recover from the devastating loss of the monetary pillar of their system.

AN UNUSUAL MEETING AT SALTSJÖBADEN

The design behind Nixon’s August 15, 1971, dollar strategy did not emerge until October 1973, more than two years later, and even then, few persons other than a handful of insiders grasped the connection. The August 1971 demonetization of the dollar was used by the London–New York fi nancial establishment to buy precious time, while policy insiders prepared a bold new monetarist design, a ‘paradigm shift’ as some preferred to term it. Certain infl uential voices in the Anglo-American fi nancial establishment had devised a strategy to create again a strong dollar, and once again to increase their relative political power in the world, just when it appeared they were in a decisive rout.

In May 1973, with the dramatic fall of the dollar still vivid, a group of 84 of the world’s top fi nancial and political insiders met at Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, the secluded island resort of the Swedish Wallenberg banking family. This gathering of Prince Bernhard’s Bilderberg group heard an American participant, Walter Levy, outline a ‘scenario’ for an imminent 400 per cent increase in OPEC petroleum revenues. The purpose of the secret Saltsjöbaden meeting was not to prevent the expected oil price shock, but rather to plan how to manage the about-to-be-created fl ood of oil dollars, a process U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger later called ‘recycling the petrodollar fl ows.’

The American speaker to the Bilderberg on Atlantic–Japanese energy policy, was clear enough. After stating the prospect that future world oil needs would be supplied by a small number of Middle East producing countries, the speaker declared, prophetically: ‘The cost of these oil imports would rise tremendously, with diffi cult implications