Globalizing Capital: A History Of The International Monetary System .

CHAPTER ONEconstraints on policy. They allowed policymakers to pursue domestic goalswithout destabilizing the exchange rate. They provided the breathing spaceneeded to organize orderly exchange rate changes. But the effectiveness ofcontrols was eroded by the postwar reconstruction of the international economy and the development of new markets and trading technologies. Thegrowth of highly liquid international financial markets in which the scale oftransactions dwarfed official international reserves made it all but impossibleto carry out orderly adjustments of currency pegs. Not only could discussionbefore the fact excite the markets and provoke unmanageable capital flows,but the act of devaluation, following obligatory denials, could damage the authorities’ reputation for defending the peg. Thus, at the same time that peggedexchange rates became more costly to maintain, they became more difficult toadjust. The shift to floating was the inevitable consequence.The problem with this story, it will be evident, is that international capitalmobility was also high before World War I, yet this did not prevent the successful operation of pegged exchange rates under the classical gold standard.Even a glance back at history reveals that changes in the extent of capital mobility do not by themselves constitute an adequate explanation for the shiftfrom pegged to floating rates.What was critical for the maintenance of pegged exchange rates, I arguein this book, was protection for governments from pressure to trade exchangerate stability for other goals. Under the nineteenth-century gold standard thesource of such protection was insulation from domestic politics. The pressurebrought to bear on twentieth-century governments to subordinate currencystability to other objectives was not a feature of the nineteenth-century world.Because the right to vote was limited, the common laborers who suffered mostfrom hard times were poorly positioned to object to increases in central bankinterest rates adopted to defend the currency peg. Neither trade unions norparliamentary labor parties had developed to the point where workers couldinsist that defense of the exchange rate be tempered by the pursuit of otherobjectives. The priority attached by central banks to defending the pegged exchange rates of the gold standard remained basically unchallenged. Governments were therefore free to take whatever steps were needed to defend theircurrency pegs.Come the twentieth century, these circumstances were transformed. It wasno longer certain that, when currency stability and full employment clashed,the authorities would opt for the former. Universal male suffrage and the riseof trade unionism and parliamentary labor parties politicized monetary andfiscal policymaking. The rise of the welfare state and the post–World War IIcommitment to full employment sharpened the trade-off between internal and2

INTRODUCTIONexternal balance. This shift from classic liberalism in the nineteenth century toembedded liberalism in the twentieth diminished the credibility of the authorities’ resolve to defend the currency peg.1This is where capital controls came in. They loosened the link betweendomestic and foreign economic policies, providing governments room to pursue other objectives such as the maintenance of full employment. Governments may no longer have been able to take whatever steps were needed todefend a currency peg, but capital controls limited the extremity of the stepsthat were required. By limiting the resources that the markets could bring tobear against an exchange rate peg, controls limited the steps that governmentshad to take in its defense. For several decades after World War II, limits oncapital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulationfrom market pressures.Over time, however, capital controls became more difficult to enforce.With neither limits on capital mobility nor limits on democracy to insulategovernments from market pressures, maintaining pegged exchange rates became problematic. In response, some countries moved toward more freelyfloating exchange rates, while others, in Western Europe, sought to stabilizetheir exchange rates once and for all by establishing a monetary union.In some respects, this argument is an elaboration of one advanced by KarlPolanyi more than half a century ago.2 Writing in 1944, the year of the BrettonWoods Conference, Polanyi suggested that the extension of the institutions ofthe market over the course of the nineteenth century aroused a political reaction in the form of associations and lobbies that ultimately undermined thestability of the market system. He gave the gold standard a place of prominence among the institutions of laissez faire in response to which this reactionhad taken place. And he suggested that the opening of national economic decision making to parties representing working-class interests had contributed tothe downfall of that international monetary system. In a sense, this book askswhether Polanyi’s thesis stands the test of time. Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as thefurther unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization againcame into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates andmonetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in thetwo domains?1The term embedded liberalism, connoting a commitment to free markets tempered by abroader commitment to social welfare and full employment, was coined by John Ruggie (1983).2Polanyi 1944.3

CHAPTER ONETo portray the evolution of international monetary arrangements as manyindividual countries responding to a common set of circumstances would bemisleading, however. Each national decision was not, in fact, independent ofthe others. The source of their independence was the network externalities thatcharacterize international monetary arrangements. When most of your friendsand colleagues use computers with Windows as their operating system, youmay choose to do likewise to obtain technical advice and ease the exchange ofdata files, even if a technologically incompatible alternative exists (thinkLinux or Leopard) that is more reliable and easier to learn when used in isolation. These synergistic effects influence the costs and benefits of the individual’s choice of technology. (For example, I wrote this book on a Windowsbased system because that is the technology used by most of my colleagues.)Similarly, the international monetary arrangement that a country prefers willbe influenced by arrangements in other countries. Insofar as the decision of acountry at a point in time depends on decisions made by other countries inpreceding periods, the former will be influenced by history. The internationalmonetary system will display path dependence. Thus, a chance event likeBritain’s “accidental” adoption of the gold standard in the eighteenth centurycould place the system on a trajectory where virtually the entire world had adopted that same standard within a century and a half.Given the network-externality characteristic of international monetary arrangements, reforming them is necessarily a collective endeavor. But the multiplicity of countries creates negotiating costs. Each government will betempted to free-ride by withholding agreement unless it secures concessions.Those who seek reform must possess political leverage sufficient to discourage such behavior. They are most likely to do so when a nexus of international joint ventures, all of which stand to be jeopardized by noncooperativebehavior, exists. Not surprisingly, such encompassing political and economiclinkages are rare. This explains the failure of international monetary conferences in the 1870s, 1920s, and 1970s. In each case, inability to reach anagreement to shift the monetary system from one trajectory to another allowed it to continue evolving of its own momentum. The only significantcounterexamples are the Western alliance during and after World War II,which developed exceptional political solidarity in the face of Nazi and Soviet threats and was able to establish the Bretton Woods System, and the European Community (now European Union), which made exceptional progresstoward economic and political integration and established the European Monetary System and now the euro.The implication is that the development of the international monetarysystem is fundamentally a historical process. The options available to aspiring4

INTRODUCTIONreformers at any time are not independent of international monetary arrangements in the past. And the arrangements of the recent past themselves reflectthe influence of earlier events. Neither the current state nor the future prospects of this evolving order can be understood without an appreciation of itshistory.5

— CHAPTER TW0 —The Gold StandardWhen we study pre-1914 monetary history, we find ourselvesfrequently reflecting on how similar were the issues of monetarypolicy then at stake to those of our time.(Marcello de Cecco, Money and Empire)Many readers will imagine that an international monetary system is a set ofarrangements negotiated by officials and experts at a summit conference. TheBretton Woods Agreement to manage exchange rates and balances of payments, which emerged from such a meeting at the Mount Washington Hotel atBretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, might be taken to epitomize theprocess. In fact, monetary arrangements established by international negotiation are the exception, not the rule. More commonly, such arrangements havearisen spontaneously out of the individual choices of countries constrained bythe prior decisions of their neighbors and, more generally, by the inheritanceof history.The emergence of the classical gold standard before World War I reflectedsuch a process. The gold standard evolved out of the variety of commoditymoney standards that emerged before the development of paper money andfractional reserve banking. Its development was one of the great monetary accidents of modern times. It owed much to Great Britain’s accidental adoptionof a de facto gold standard in 1717, when Sir Isaac Newton, as master of themint, set too low a gold price for silver, inadvertently causing all but veryworn and clipped silver coin to disappear from circulation. With Britain’s industrial revolution and its emergence in the nineteenth century as the world’sleading financial and commercial power, Britain’s monetary practices becamean increasingly logical and attractive alternative to silver-based money forcountries seeking to trade with and borrow from the British Isles. Out of theseautonomous decisions of national governments an international system of fixedexchange rates was born.

T H E G O L D S TA N D A R DBoth the emergence and the operation of this system owed much to specific historical conditions. The system presupposed an intellectual climate inwhich governments attached priority to currency and exchange rate stability.It presupposed a political setting in which they were shielded from pressure todirect policy to other ends. It presupposed open and flexible markets that linkedflows of capital and commodities in ways that insulated economies from shocksto the supply and demand for merchandise and finance.Already by World War I many of these conditions had been compromisedby economic and political modernization. And the rise of fractional reservebanking had exposed the gold standard’s Achilles’ heel. Banks that could finance loans with deposits were vulnerable to depositor runs in the event of aloss of confidence. This vulnerability endangered the financial system and created an argument for lender-of-last-resort intervention. The dilemma for central banks and governments became whether to provide only as much credit aswas consistent with the gold-standard statutes or to supply the additional liquidity expected of a lender of last resort. That this dilemma did not bring thegold-standard edifice tumbling down was attributable to luck and to politicalconditions that allowed for international solidarity in times of crisis.PREHISTORYCoins minted from precious metal have served as money since time immemorial. Even today this characteristic of coins is sometimes evident in their names,which indicate the amount of precious metal they once contained. The Englishpound and penny derive from the Roman pound and denier, both units ofweight. The pound as a unit of weight remains familiar to English speakers,while the penny as a measure of weight survives in the grading of nails.1Silver was the dominant money throughout medieval times and into themodern era. Other metals were too heavy (such as copper) or too light (gold)when cast into coins of a value convenient for transactions.2 These difficultiesdid not prevent experimentation: the Swedish government, which was partowner of the largest copper mine in Europe, established a copper standard in1625. Since the price of copper was one one-hundredth that of silver, fullbodied copper coins weighed one hundred times as much as silver coins ofequal value; one large-denomination coin weighed forty-three pounds. This1An introduction to this topic, which explores it at greater length than is possible here, isFeavearyear 1931.2Still other possibilities were precluded because the metals in question were insufficientlydurable or too difficult to work with using existing minting technology.7

CHAPTER TWOmoney could not be stolen because it was too heavy for thieves to carry, butwagons were needed for everyday transactions. The Swedish economist EliHeckscher describes how the country was led to organize its entire transportation system accordingly.3Although gold coins had been used by the Romans, only in medieval timesdid they come into widespread use in Western Europe, beginning in Italy, theseat of the thirteenth-century commercial revolution, where merchants foundthem convenient for settling large transactions. Gold florins circulated in Florence, sequins or ducats in Venice. Gold coins were issued in France in 1255by Louis IX. By the fourteenth century, gold was used for large transactionsthroughout Europe.4 But silver continued to dominate everyday use. In TheMerchant of Venice Shakespeare described silver as “the pale and commondrudge ‘tween man and man,” gold as “gaudy . . . hard food for Midas.” Onlyin the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did this change.This mélange of gold, silver, and copper coin was the basis for international settlements. When the residents of a country purchased abroad morethan they sold, or lent more than they borrowed, they settled the differencewith money acceptable to their creditors. This money might take the form ofgold, silver, or other precious metals, just as a country today settles a balanceof-payments deficit by transferring U.S. dollars or euros. Money in circulationrose in the surplus country and fell in the deficit country, working to eliminatethe deficit.Is it meaningful then to suggest, as historians and economists sometimesdo, that the modern international monetary system first emerged in the final decades of the nineteenth century? It would be more accurate to say that the goldstandard as a basis for international monetary affairs emerged after 1870. Onlythen did countries settle on gold as the basis for their money supplies. Only thenwere pegged exchange rates based on the gold standard firmly established.THE DILEMMAS OF BIMETALLISMIn the nineteenth century, the monetary statutes of many countries permittedthe simultaneous minting and circulation of both gold and silver coins. Thesecountries were on what were known as bimetallic standards.5 Only Britain3Heckscher 1954, p. 91.Spooner 1972, chap. 1.5On the origins of the term, see Cernuschi 1887. Bimetallism can involve the circulation ofany two metallic currencies, not just those based on gold and silver. Until 1772 Sweden was on abimetallic silver-copper standard.48

T H E G O L D S TA N D A R Dwas fully on the gold standard from the start of the century. The Germanstates, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Scandinavia, Russia, and the Far Eastoperated silver standards.6 Countries with bimetallic standards provided thelink between the gold and silver blocs.The French monetary law of 1803 was representative of their bimetallicstatutes: it required the mint to supply coins with legal-tender status to individuals presenting specified qualities of silver or gold. The mint ratio of thetwo metals was 151/2 to 1—one could obtain from the mint coins of equalvalue containing a certain amount of gold or 151/2 times as much silver. Bothgold and silver coins could be used to discharge tax obligations and other contractual liabilities.Maintaining the simultaneous circulation of both gold and silver coin wasnot easy. Initially, both gold and silver circulated in France because the 151/2to 1 mint ratio was close to the market price—that is, 151/2 ounces of silvertraded for roughly an ounce of gold in the marketplace. Say, however, that theprice of gold on the world market rose more than the price of silver, as it didin the last third of the nineteenth century (see Figure 2.1). Imagine that itsprice rose to the point where 16 ounces of silver traded for an ounce of gold.This created incentives for arbitrage. The arbitrager could import 151/2 ouncesof silver and have it coined at the mint. He could exchange that silver coin forone containing an ounce of gold. He could export that gold and trade it for 16ounces of silver on foreign markets (since 16 to 1 was the price prevailingthere). Through this act of arbitrage he recouped his investment and obtainedin addition an extra half ounce of silver.As long as the market ratio stayed significantly above the mint ratio, theincentive for arbitrage remained. Arbitragers would import silver and exportgold until all the gold coin in the country had been exported. (This can bethought of as the operation of Gresham’s Law, with the bad money, silver,driving out the good one, gold.) Alternatively, if the market ratio fell belowthe mint ratio (which could happen, as it did in the 1850s, as a result of golddiscoveries), arbitragers would import gold and export silver until the latterhad disappeared from circulation. Only if the mint and market ratios remainedsufficiently close would both gold and silver circulate.“Sufficiently close” is a weaker condition than “identical.” The simultaneous circulation of gold and silver coin was not threatened by small deviationsbetween the market and mint ratios. One reason was that governments chargeda nominal fee, known as brassage, to coin bullion. Although the amount6Countries were formally on a silver standard when they recognized only silver coin as legaltender and freely coined silver but not gold. In practice, many of these countries were officiallybimetallic, but their mint ratios were so out of line with market prices that only silver circulated.9

CHAPTER TWOFigure 2.1. Relative Price of Gold to Silver, 1830–1902. Source: Warren and Pearson 1933.varied over time, in France it was typically about one-fifth of 1 percent of thevalue of the gold involved, and somewhat higher for silver.7 The differencebetween the market and mint ratios had to exceed this cost before arbitragewas profitable. Other factors worked in the same direction. Arbitrage tooktime; the price discrepancy motivating it might disappear before the transaction was complete. There were costs of shipping and insurance: even after theintroduction of steamships in the 1820s and rail travel from Le Havre to Parisin the 1840s, transporting bullion between Paris and London could add another 1/2 percent to the cost. These costs created a corridor around the mintratio within which there was no incentive for arbitrage.That the mint in some countries, such as France, stood ready to coin thetwo metals at a fixed rate of exchange worked to support the simultaneous circulation of both gold and silver. If the world supply of silver increased and itsrelative price fell, as in the preceding example, silver would be imported intoFrance to be coined, and gold would be exported. The share of silver coin inFrench circulation would rise. By absorbing silver and releasing gold, the7Brassage was greater for silver than for gold because silver coins were worth only a fractionof what gold coins of the same weight were worth and therefore entailed

Introduction T he international monetary system is the glue that binds national economies together. Its role is to lend order and stability to foreign exchange markets, to . also necessarily an account of the development of international capital mar-kets. Hence the motivation for organizing this book into fi ve parts, each corre-