The Diversity We Are Missing Today

In of his new book, Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, Jeffrey Garton writes about the meetings at Camp David on August 13 to 15, 1971, when Richard Nixon and small group of advisers¹ broke the link between gold and the US dollar (i.e., “closing the gold window”), instituted wage-and-price controls, and more.²  In describing the meeting Mr. Garton emphasizes there was a real diversity among those present.  It was not, course, a diversity of race or sex.  They were all white men.  (It was, after all, 1971.)  But there was a diversity of viewpoints.  Coming into the meeting, some opposed wage-and-price controls (President Nixon had always opposed them because of his experience in the Office of Price Administration in 1942); some were okay with them.  Some thought we needed to close the gold window immediately; others wanted to do the rest of the program and then wait and see.  The investment tax credit, which had recently been repealed, was to be reinstated.  The key was that a number of people with different viewpoints met, talked, and in a weekend came up with a set of policies to change the world economic system.³