Alle radici della rivoluzione neoliberista. Nixon e l'abbandono di Bretton Woods

The fall of the Bretton Woods international monetary system, in 1971, has often been interpreted as a defeat of politics – namely the choices of United States – on the part of economic forces. The documents of the Nixon presidency (1969-74), declassified at the National Archives of the United States, allow the adoption of a different perspective. The monetary instability of the second half of the 1960's, made it possible for the new republican administration to develop, since 1969, lines of thought and policies, aimed at abandoning the “embedded liberalism”of Bretton Woods, in the name of a return to more traditional laissez faire practices. Influenced by important foreign policy considerations as well, the neo-liberal international economic choices of the Nixon administration anticipated by a decade those of Ronald Reagan, and contributed to pave them the way.