Then, on Sunday, August 15, 1971, President Nixon went on television to announce that the U.S. would renege on its promise to allow dollars to be turned in for gold, which led the dollar to plummet.
renege on 违背
plummet 暴跌
You better make sense of what happened to other people in other times and other places because if you don’t you won’t know if these things can happen to you and, if they do, you won’t know how to deal with them.
if they do这里不知道怎么翻译， 三个if放一块有点懵。
你最好清楚别人在其他时间，其他地点发生了什么，因为不知道如果这些事发生在你身上，。。。。。你不知道你会如何解决他们。
Then we gathered in groups to thrash out what we would do if we were in the shoes of the people in those situations.
thrash out 讨论
