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[...] The more US deficits grew, the greater the global Minotaur's appetite for Europe and Asia's capital. Its truly global significance was due to its role in recycling national circuits (profits, savings, surplus money) through the international circuits that Wall Street had established. It kept …

[...] unlike in the late 1960s, German inflation was less of at threat with Volcker on the loose. The American vacuum cleaner, powered by Volcker's high interest rates, could now be counted upon to suck the fresh Deutsche Marks in, preventing them from making their way immediately from France back …

[...] if 'the weak suffer what they must', their very capacity, let alone willingness, to reproduce the power of the strong declines precipitiously.

[...] combining high returns to financial capital (requiring high interest rates) with high profit rates for American businesses (requiring low interest rates) was never going to be easy, and Volcker knew this. It was a combination that could only come about if another way of providing that profit …

The only way the Franc's Deutsche Mark value could be kept constant was, indeed, for the Bundesbank to keep doing the one thing it detested: incessantly buy francs using freshly printed Deutsche Marks. Were these marks to remain stashed in the vaults of the French central bank--or anywhere else for…