Unknown Friedman: The Contribution of Great Monetarist to the Fall of Bretton Woods

2005 ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Moiseev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Exchange Rates ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Fixed Exchange Rates ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Us ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Flexible Exchange Rates

In 1973, the US Treasury Secretary informed the IMF that the United States had moved from system of fixed exchange rates to flexible exchange rates. The fall of the Bretton Woods system became the culmination of the campaign led by M. Friedman during the previous quarter of a century. This publication studies the process by which Friedman's case for flexible exchange rates was transformed from economic "heresy" to the majority academic opinion. The primary focus of the paper is political economy of organization and developing of the intellectual and political forces which undermined the Bretton Woods system.

Book Reviews

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-367
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Exchange Rates ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Currency Crises ◽  
The United States ◽  
Exchange Rate Policy ◽  
Monetary Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Currency Policy

Benjamin J. Cohen of University of California, Santa Barbara reviews “Currency Politics: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy”, by Jeffry A. Frieden. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the politics surrounding exchange rates, including the influence of industries on the political process. Discusses the political economy of currency choice; a theory of currency policy preferences; the United States─from greenbacks to gold, 1862-79; the United States─silver threats among the gold, 1880-96; European monetary integration─from Bretton Woods to the euro and beyond; Latin American currency policy, 1970-2010; the political economy of Latin American currency crises; and the politics of exchange rates─implications and extensions.” Frieden is Professor of Government at Harvard University.

Western Europe and the collapse of Bretton Woods

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-300
Author(s):  
Michael De Groot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rate System ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The Us ◽  
Exchange Rate System ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact

This article contends that Western Europe played a crucial and overlooked role in the collapse of Bretton Woods. Most scholars highlight the role of the United States, focusing on the impact of US balance of payments deficits, Washington’s inability to manage inflation, the weakness of the US dollar, and American domestic politics. Drawing on archival research in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, this article argues that Western European decisions to float their currencies at various points from 1969 to 1973 undermined the fixed exchange rate system. The British, Dutch, and West Germans opted to float their currencies as a means of protecting against imported inflation or protecting their reserve assets, but each float reinforced speculators’ expectations that governments would break from their fixed parities. The acceleration of financial globalization and the expansion of the Euromarkets in the 1960s made Bretton Woods increasingly difficult to defend.

Bretton Woods Cassandra

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-150
Author(s):  
Ivo Maes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Foreign Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Reserve ◽  
International Reserves ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Vietnam War

In 1951, Robert Triffin became a professor at Yale. By the end of the 1950s, Triffin became more and more worried about the international reserve position of the United States due to the country’s gold losses and the increase in dollar liabilities. In his view, the continued deterioration in the US net reserve position would undermine foreigners’ confidence in the dollar as a safe medium for reserve accumulation. So, the gold exchange standard was not sustainable, as argued in his famous dilemma. Triffin thus established his reputation as the Cassandra who predicted the end of Bretton Woods. However, he was an optimistic Cassandra. He sought a more international solution for the world liquidity problem, a true internationalization of the foreign exchange component of the world’s international reserves. This chapter also pays attention to life in Yale and Triffin’s reaction to the Vietnam War.

Unwinding Bretton Woods

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-106
Author(s):  
Julian Germann
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rates ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Price Stability ◽  
Monetary Reform ◽  
German State ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Fixed Exchange Rates ◽  
The Us ◽  
Popular View

This chapter asks how German policymakers responded to the monetary turbulences that signaled the end of the golden age of capitalism from the mid-1960s onward. To address this question, the chapter challenges the popular view that Bretton Woods died at the hands of a declining US hegemon and zooms in on the actions of its allies: while French attempts to push the US toward monetary reform destroyed the dollar-gold standard as early as March 1968, German efforts to protect themselves from the abuse of dollar seignorage upended the regime of fixed exchange rates three years later. The chapter argues that, unlike elsewhere in the advanced industrialized world, the shift toward floating enabled the German state to double down on price stability and restabilize its embedded liberal compromise—an experience that framed how German policymakers would respond to the wider economic turmoil of the 1970s.

The Political and Professional Economies of US Global Corporate Criminal Enforcement

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel W. Buell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
The Us ◽  
Distinctive Structure ◽  
Domestic Influences

This chapter seeks to explain to a mostly international and non-legal audience what drives and shapes the practices of prosecutors in their enforcement of US criminal law against corporations and their agents for conduct outside the United States. This explanation must begin with US law, which has jurisdictional and other features that afford American prosecutors unparalleled leeway and reach. Much more of the explanation for enforcement behaviors, however, lies in the political and professional economies that determine the incentives and choices of the US Department of Justice and its individual prosecutors. This explanation requires an understanding of the domestic political economy of criminal enforcement within the United States and the distinctive structure and culture of the American bar. Beyond this descriptive work, the chapter considers what might lie ahead as present US prosecutorial practices, which have been driven mostly by domestic influences, increasingly run into, or are pursued by, the prosecutorial practices of other nations, as well as attitudes toward prosecution in those nations.

scholarly journals The United States and Latin America Regional Cooperation: Organization of American States (OAS)

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Demeiati Nur Kusumaningrum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
The Us

AbstrakPenelitian ini berpendapat bahwa perjanjian kerja sama OAS menjadi instrumen Amerika Serikat untuk mencapai kepentingan keamanan dan ekonomi. Semangat untuk menyebarkan kebebasan dan hak asasi manusia dianggap sebagai karakter AS sebagai negara demokrasi liberal. Pemerintahan Obama mengambil kesempatan lebih besar untuk memperkuat kerja sama dengan negara-negara Amerika Latin melalui OAS sebagai sarana untuk merebut kekuasaan dan pengaruh yang berkaitan dengan masalah perjanjian perdagangan bebas Amerika Latin dan kontrol terhadap penyelundupan narkoba. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian kualitatif dengan analisis deskriptif. Data dan informasi diperoleh dari kajian pustaka. Peneliti menerapkan analisis konten dokumen melalui publikasi pemerintah, publikasi ilmiah, dan laporan. Perubahan kebijakan luar negeri AS di bawah pemerintahan Obama percaya pada reformasi pasar dan pragmatisme Amerika berdasarkan demokrasi dan liberalisasi perdagangan. Kemajuan ekonomi Mercosur memicu kepercayaan terhadap kemajuan pembangunan di antara negara-negara Amerika Latin dan membuat mereka menjauhi pengaruh politik AS. Sementara itu, keamanan nasional AS terancam oleh meningkatnya perdagangan narkoba dari Meksiko dan kawasan selatan sejak tahun 1980-an. Kerangka kerja kerja sama OAS dalam memerangi perdagangan narkoba yang dikembangkan oleh AS sebagai aktor dominan melegitimasi pengaruh AS dalam forum regional. Dengan memperkuat kerja sama AS dan Amerika Latin pada pengendalian obat-obatan, pemerintah AS mampu memanfaatkan berkembangnya ekonomi Mercosur dan merealisasikan kebijakan AS tentang pengendalian narkoba di seluruh kawasan Amerika.Kata kunci: Amerika Latin, Ekonomi Politik, Keamanan, Kepentingan, Regionalisme AbstractThis research argue on the OAS cooperation agreement becomes United States instrument to achieve the political economy and political security. The spirit to spread of freedom and human right perceived as the character of US as a liberal democratic country. The Obama administration take a greater chance to strengthened the cooperation with Latin American countries by the OAS as a means to seize power and influence dealt with the matter of Latin America free trade agreement and drugs control. This research used qualitative research method by descriptive analysis. The data and information obtained from library research. The researcher apply document content analysis through the government publications, scholars publications, IGO reports, and other research publication. The foreign policy changes of US foreign policy under Obama administration believe in market reform and American pragmatism based on democracy and trade liberalization. The economic advancement of Mercosur triger the confidence building among Latin America countries and let them survive without US political influence.Whereas, US national security threaten by the increasing of drug trafficking from Mexico and southern area since 1980s. The OAS framework of cooperation on combating drugs trafficking developed by US as the dominant actor to legitimate the US influence in American regional forum. By strengthening the US and Latin America cooperation on drugs control the US administration is able to contribute to the economic benefits of Mercosur and achieve US policy on drug control throughout the American region.Keywords: Interest, Latin America, Political Economy, Regionalism, Security

International economics and international politics: a framework for analysis

1975 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Fred Bergsten ◽  
Robert O. Keohane ◽  
Joseph S. Nye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Exchange Rates ◽  
International Economics ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Monetary System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
Flexible Exchange Rates

Until August 1971, the United States categorically rejected any notion of devaluing the dollar and championed an international monetary system based on fixed but adjustable exchange rates. From August 1971 through February 1973, the United States aggressively sought massive devaluation of the dollar, and since early 1973, it has actively promoted the adoption of highly flexible exchange rates.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

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