A GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL MONETARY ECONOMICS

01 febrero, 2010 en 3:53 p. m.

When the Bretton Woods system of fi xed-but-adjustable exchange rates foundered in March 1973, exchange rates apparently went their own merry way, independent of differences in infl ation rates between countries or of the current account of the balance of payments. A decisive factor was that capital movements developed to such an extent that they soon seemed totally to swamp international payments on account of trade in goods and services. Surveys conducted in April 2001 by 48 central banks and other monetary authorities put the average daily turnover in so-called traditional foreign-exchange (or forex) markets (including spot, outright forward and foreign-exchange swap transactions and adjusted for double counting) at $1200 billion, of which $387 billion was made up of spot transactions (BIS 2002, p. 5).