Foreign Exchange History
Money, Currency, and Foreign Trade
One of the qualities that money requires is that it be scarce. If it were not, it
would have no value as money. For instance, if ordinary stones were money, then
anyone could just pick some up off the ground and pay a merchant for his goods.
But why would a merchant accept stones when he could just stoop down to pick up
stones, too. He wouldn't need to sell merchandise, or do anything at all, if he
could just pick up some stones and use it for money. Everyone else would think similarly,
hence, there would be no economy, and nothing to buy with the stones.
Although many different items were used for money in the past, people eventually
discovered that gold was the ideal material for money. It could not be manufactured
or printed, it was not easily mined, and it was difficult to find new sources for
gold. That it was also the most ductile and malleable of metals made it easy to
fashion into coins. But gold was heavy, and how much a person could carry is severely
limited, since a 10 dollar gold piece would be 10 times heavier than a 1 dollar
gold piece.
So governments decided that printed currency, usually called bills or notes,
was the solution. A 10 dollar bill, for instance, weighs just as much as 1 dollar
bill or a 100 dollar bill. This was a good solution, except for a few little problems.
What would prevent anybody from just printing money? Governments solved that problem
by using secret methods of printing and passing harsh laws to punish anyone who
would try. But what would prevent the government from just printing more money to
pay itself and others? Governments have done that—Germany, after World War I, for
instance. Consequently, their currency become worthless. It took a wheelbarrow of
cash to buy a loaf of bread. Germans were literally burning money to keep warm in
the winter. Oftentimes, people in such economies turn to hard currency, which
is a trusted currency of a stable country, because nobody wants to buy or sell using
currency that is continually devaluing. So obviously, there has to be some way to
prevent governments from just printing money, and the way that was done was to make
it equal, by law, to something else that couldn't be easily made, printed, or found—gold.
The advantages of using money backed by gold were numerous:
- Since every country had gold, a natural material, and most people were familiar
with it, it provided a common measure of value.
- It helped keep inflation in check by keeping the money supply based on the gold
standard limited, thus stabilizing economies. Inflation is the result of
increasing supplies of money for a given economic state. More money causes the price
of everything to go up because it increases the demand for goods and services before
the economy has time enough to expand its available goods and services—so prices
go up. By tying the amount of currency to the amount of gold that a country possesses,
it limits the amount of currency that can be printed.
- Low inflation allows long-term planning. There are many large projects that must
be paid for over a period of time. It would be almost impossible to project future
costs without knowing what future prices were going to be.
Fixed Exchange Rates
Before there was significant trade between countries, there was little need for
foreign exchange, and when there was a need, it was served by gold, since gold was
used by most of the major countries. However, as trade expanded, there was a need
to exchange currency rather than gold because gold was heavy and difficult to transport.
But how could different countries equalize their currency in terms of another currency.
This was achieved by equalizing all currencies in terms of the amount of gold that
it represented—the gold-exchange standard.
Gold-Exchange Standard
Under this system, which prevailed from 1879 to 1934, the value of the major currencies
was fixed in terms of how much gold for which they could be exchanged, and thus,
they were fixed in terms of every other currency. If, by example, a British pound
was worth 24 grains of gold and a U.S. dollar was worth 12 grains of gold, then
the British pound had twice the value of a U.S. dollar, fixing the exchange rate
at 2 dollars for each pound.
One of the requirements that the countries adhering to the gold standard needed
to follow was to maintain their money supply to a fixed quantity of gold, so the
government could only issue more money if it had obtained more gold. This requirement,
of course, was to prevent countries from just printing money to pay foreigners,
which had to be prevented because, otherwise, there could be no foreign trade. Why
would a trader accept currency for his goods if the country could just print more
of it, thereby reducing the value of the currency that was already available, and
thereby reducing the value of the currency held by the trader?
A corollary of this requirement is that gold had to flow freely between different
countries; otherwise no country could export more than they import, and vice versa,
and still maintain its supply of currency to the gold it held in stock. So if there
was a net transfer of currency from one country to another, gold would have to follow.
The Collapse of the Gold Standard
The main problem with the gold standard was that if a country was not competitive
in the world marketplace, it would lose more and more gold as more goods were imported
and less exported. With less gold in stock, the country would have to contract the
money supply, which would hurt the country's economy. Less money in circulation
reduces employment, income, and output; more money increases employment, income,
and output. This is the basis of modern monetary policy, which is implemented
by central banks to stimulate a sluggish economy by increasing the money supply
or to reign in an overheating one by contracting the supply of money.
During the 1930's, the world was in the throes of the Great Depression. Countries
started abandoning the gold standard by reducing the amount of gold backing their
currency so that they could increase the money supply to stimulate their economies.
This deliberate reduction of value is called a devaluation of currency. When
some of the countries abandoned the gold standard, then it just collapsed, for it
was a system that could not work unless all of the trading countries agreed to it.
Of course, at some point, something else would have to take its place; otherwise,
there could be no world trade—at least not in the quantities that were then occurring.
As World War II was coming to a close, it was obvious that another system would
be needed.
Bretton Woods and the Adjustable-Peg System
The leaders of the allied nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, to
set up a better system of fixed exchange rates. The U.S. dollar was fixed at $35
per ounce of gold and all other currencies were expressed in terms of dollars. This
official fixed rate of exchange was known as the par value of currency
(aka par of exchange, par exchange rate).
However, to avoid making deleterious macroeconomic adjustments to maintain the exchange
rate, the new system provided for an adjustable peg, that allowed the exchange rate
to be altered under specific circumstances. Thus, this Bretton Woods system
was also known as the adjustable-peg system. To effect this new system, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created.
The new system required that each country value its currency in terms of gold or
the United States dollar, which, of course, fixed the exchange rate among all currencies.
Each country also had to maintain an account at the IMF that was proportional to
the country's population, volume of trade, and national income.
Each country had to maintain the exchange rate within narrow limits, except when
the balance of payments deficit become too large. To maintain the limits, a country
could:
- use official reserves, which is the foreign currency held by a country from
a previous surplus.
- borrow from the IMF by borrowing the foreign currency, and using its own
currency as collateral.
- sell gold to a country for its currency.
When the imbalances became too large, a country could adjust its rate to no more
than 10% of the current value—any larger adjustment required the approval of the
IMF board. This prevented countries from devaluing their currency for their own
benefit.
The Bretton Woods system began to weaken in the 1960s, when foreigners accumulated
large amounts of U.S. dollars from post World War II aid and sales of their exports
in the United States. There were concerns as to whether the U.S. had enough gold
to redeem all the dollars.
With reserves of gold falling steadily, the situation could not be sustained and
the U.S. decided to abandon this system. In 1971, President Nixon announced that
U.S. dollars would no longer be convertible into gold, so the exchange rate was
allowed to float. Because of the central role played by the United States, the Bretton
Woods system could not be sustained. By 1973, this action led to the system of managed
floating exchange rates that exist today.
The Managed Floating Exchange Rate
Managed floating exchange rate, which is the system that exists today, is
a rate that mostly floats, but is sometimes changed by countries, usually effected
by their central banks, by intervening directly in the forex market, usually
be buying or selling the currency that the country wants to influence, and thereby
influencing supply and demand. However, direct intervention by the major countries
has been rare. For instance, the Federal Reserve has only intervened 8 days in 1995,
and only 2 days in the 10-year period 1996-2006. Many smaller countries, however,
either peg their currency to the United States dollar, or peg it to a basket of
currencies.
The major benefit of the flexible floating exchange rate is that it corrects imbalances
automatically. If a country imports more than it exports, then its currency will
decline in relation to the importing country's, which will make imports more expensive
and exports less expensive, which will reverse the imbalance, or at least limit
any increase in the imbalance. It also helps to adjust the system when significant
events happen that have a significant impact on the balance of trade, such as the
spike in oil prices in 1973-1974 and 1981-1983, or when countries experience significant
recessions.
Another major benefit of the floating exchange rate is that it allows countries
to manage their own economies through monetary policy, expanding the money supply
to stimulate the economy, or contracting it to rein in inflation. Indeed, the publication
of significant changes in monetary policy, such as the raising or lowering of interest
rates, by the major countries increases volatility in its currency, both before
and after the news is published. Many traders stay out of the market during these
times because of its unpredictability. Most major forex trading websites have a
list of when these events occur for the currency pairs that they trade.
The major fear about flexible exchange rates is that it would diminish trade because
of unknown changes in the rate that could affect sales or projects that take time.
However, this problem has been solved with forward contracts that eliminates any uncertainty
about future exchange rates.
Changes in the foreign exchange rates of yen
per dollar and dollars per pound from 1970-2001.
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Source: New York Federal Reserve Bank.
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The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
The IMF has survived the demise of the Bretton Woods system. Today it loans money
to developing countries or to those in crisis, or to Communist countries changing
over to capitalism. It can impose strict rules, if necessary, over the economies
of the loan recipients to help them repay their debt.
Another organization created by the Bretton Woods Agreement—the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), or World Bank has
also survived. The World Bank's original purpose was to finance the reconstruction
of Europe and Asia after World War II. Today, the World Bank loans money, mostly
to developing countries, for commercial and infrastructure projects, and the loans
must be backed by the country receiving the loans. It does not, however, compete
with commercial banks.