Then that weekend, Nixon assembled a dozen top officials at Camp David in complete secrecy to plot upending the monetary system that had undergirded Western markets since World War II. Sunday night, in a surprise national television address, Nixon announced that the U.S. was abandoning the “gold standard” that tied the U.S. dollar to gold reserves, and imposing a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices to arrest inflation, a step the administration believed would prevent a looming economic crisis.
