The impact of economic slowdown was only just beginning to be felt when two external shocks brought the Western European economy to a shuddering halt. On August 15th 1971, US President Richard Nixon unilaterally announced that his country was abandoning the system of fixed exchange rates. The US dollar, the anchor of the international monetary system since Bretton Woods, would henceforth float against other currencies. The background to this decision was the huge military burden of the
