Many of us are old enough to recall the rampant inflation and economic stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s as the backdrop of a politically turbulent and socially transformative era. But few people who lived through the era were aware of how close the U.S. dollar, and the global monetary system with it, came to collapse. Is the world economy in a similar situation today? And if so, what can we learn from what happened then?

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