‘To sell the British Empire for a packet of cigarettes’

Under the Bretton Woods Agreement, gold will purchase any currency. . . . Of 28 billion dollars of monetary gold in the world, 23 billion are in the vaults of Fort Knox. If we are going to make gold the basis of credit, in my estimation, we are handing over world economic power, outside the Soviet Union, finally and decisively to the United States. . . .