Incredible Minutes from a 1974 Henry Kissinger Staff Meeting on Gold

The following excerpts are from a transcript of a 1974 meeting held by the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his staff. This particular meeting was held on April 25, and focused on an European Commission Proposal to revalue their gold assets. What follows is an incredible insight into the minds of powerful American leaders scheming to maintain power and show other nations their place. What is most significant is how clearly they understood that demonetizing gold was a critical strategy to maintaining a dominant power position in the world.

So to those who continue to say that “gold doesn’t matter” because it hasn’t been used as an official asset in the monetary system for decades, I say give me a break. In fact, the reality of gold having been largely demonetized makes it an even greater threat going forward if the U.S. does not have all the gold it claims to, and other nations have more than they admit to.

Thanks to In Gold We Trust for bringing this to my attention. Choice excerpts are provided below, and breaks in the conversation are denoted with an “…” Enjoy.

Secondly, Mr. Secretary, it does present an opportunity though—and we should try to negotiate for this—to move towards a demonetization of gold, to begin to get gold moving out of the system.

Secretary Kissinger: But how do you do that?

Mr. Enders: Well, there are several ways. One way is we could say to them that they would accept this kind of arrangement, provided that the gold were channelled out through an international agency—either in the IMF or a special pool—and sold into the market, so there would be gradual increases.

Secretary Kissinger: But the French would never go for this.

Mr. Enders: We can have a counter-proposal. There’s a further proposal—and that is that the IMF begin selling its gold—which is now 7 billion—to the world market, and we should try to negotiate that. That would begin the demonetization of gold.

Secretary Kissinger: Why are we so eager to get gold out of the system?

Mr. Enders: We were eager to get it out of the system—get started—because it’s a typical balancing of either forward or back. If this proposal goes back, it will go back into the centerpiece system.

Secretary Kissinger: But why is it against our interests? I understand the argument that it’s against our interest that the Europeans take a unilateral decision contrary to our policy. Why is it against our interest to have gold in the system?