Smithsonian Agreement
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The Smithsonian Agreement was a December 1971 agreement that adjusted the fixed exchange rates established at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. The other currencies were still pegged to the dollar until March 1973.
Background
The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 established an international fixed exchange rate system based on the gold exchange standard, in which currencies were pegged to the United States dollar, itself convertible into gold at $35/ounce.
A negative balance of payments, growing public debt incurred by the Vietnam War and Great Society programs, and monetary inflation by the Federal Reserve caused the dollar to become increasingly overvalued in the 1960s.[1] The drain on US gold reserves culminated with the London Gold Pool collapse in March 1968.[2]
On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon unilaterally suspended the convertibility of US dollars into gold. The United States had deliberately offered this convertability in 1944; it was put into practice by the U.S. Treasury. The suspension made the dollar effectively a fiat currency.
Nixon's administration subsequently entered negotiations with industrialized allies to reassess exchange rates following this development.
Meeting in December 1971 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Group of Ten signed the Smithsonian Agreement. The US pledged to peg the dollar at $38/ounce (instead of $35/ounce; in other words: the USD rate lost 7,9 %) with 2.25% trading bands, and other countries agreed to appreciate their currencies versus the dollar: Yen + 16,9 %; Deutsche Mark + 13,6 %, French Franc + 8,6 %, British pound the same, Italian lira + 7,5 %.[3] The group also planned to balance the world financial system using special drawing rights alone.
Development
Although the Smithsonian Agreement was hailed by President Nixon as a fundamental reorganization of international monetary affairs, it failed to encourage discipline by the Federal Reserve or the United States government. The dollar price in the gold free market continued to cause pressure on its official rate; soon after a 10% devaluation was announced on 14 February 1973, Japan and the EEC countries decided to let their currencies float. A decade later, all industrialized nations had done so.[4][5][6]
See also
- Bretton Woods system
- Floating currency
- Sherman Silver Purchase Act
- United States Mint
- ISO 4217
- Exchange rate
- History of money
- Snake in the tunnel
- Japanese yen
References
- ↑ Blanchard (2000), op. cit., Ch. 9, pp. 172–173, and Ch. 23, pp. 447–450.
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- ↑ Otmar Emminger: DM, Dollar, Währungskrisen – Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Bundesbankpräsidenten, 1986, p. 205
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Further reading
- Otmar Emminger: Das Smithsonian Agreement - eine international abgestimmte Korrektur der Währungsparitäten. A chapter in: D-Mark, Dollar, Währungskrisen. Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Bundesbankpräsidenten. DVA 1986, ISBN 3-421-06333-8 (Emminger's autobiography)
