Ursula Von der Leyen at Davos:
“1971 was the year of the so-called Nixon shock, and the decision to de-link the U.S. dollar from gold. In an instant, (…) the entire global economic order collapsed. But it also created the conditions for what would become a truly global order. The seismic change we are going through today is an opportunity, in fact a necessity, to build a new form of Europe.”
This sounded less like strategy and more like a confession.
The de-linking of the U.S. dollar from gold, was the very moment they seized financial control of the world.
It was the mechanism through which money was severed from value and the world was quietly locked into a debt-based system with no natural limits.
Once money no longer needed to be backed by anything real, it could be printed endlessly. And it was. The result is the system we now inhabit:
• fiat currencies steadily losing purchasing power
• inflation hollowing out the middle class
• governments drowning in debt
• citizens trapped in permanent obligation to the same financial architecture
Thirty-eight trillion dollars of U.S. debt later, the picture is undeniable. Everyone owes the system but the system owes nothing to anyone.
I find it very revealing that Ursula would bring this moment up now. The Davos crowd are not outsiders analysing history, these are the custodians of that very system, the political representatives of the banking and financial order that engineered it. To reference the gold standard removal as a model during a time of global instability is almost an admission of method.
Crisis, shock, volatility; these are are the tools through which power has always been consolidated. Notice she does not speak of repair, restraint, or accountability. She speaks of opportunity. Opportunity to reshape, redesign and bring forth their “Great Reset.”
It seems like she still believes that enough fear, disruption, and urgency will allow a new system to be imposed from the top down, but that old playbook worked when the world was asleep. That world is gone.
The system she represents is unraveling, because people can now see it. Fiat is exposed, debt is unsustainable and institutions lack legitimacy.
The Great Reset has already failed. The architecture it depended on has been dismantled piece by piece. And whatever they may still want to do, the balance of power has shifted.
If anything, her remarks reveal not a coming victory, but an inability to let go. And when the architects of an old system start openly referencing the moment they captured control last time, it’s usually because they know they won’t get another chance.
They know they’ve lost.
