The events of September 2008 – the nationalisation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; the disappearance of the investment banking industry in the US; and the Bush administration’s $700bn bailout to save what is left of Anglo-American capitalism – demonstrate that the 37-year experiment with fiat money and floating exchange rates has failed catastrophically.

When Richard Nixon destroyed the Bretton Woods International Monetary System in 1971 by closing the “gold window” at the Treasury, he severed the last link between dollars and gold. What followed was a spiralling proliferation of increasingly spurious credit instruments denominated in a debased currency. The most glaring and lethal example of this madness has been the growth of the unregulated derivatives market, which has ballooned in size to $600,000bn, the equivalent of almost $100,000 per person on Earth.