Читать книгу Foreign Exchange: The Complete Deal - James McDowell. Sharpe - Страница 12

In the 1970s currency instability emerged as the accepted policy and this received the benign nomenclature of a float. The 1974 Economic Report of the US President, summarising the move away from fixed exchange rates, read:

The year 1973 may be characterised as one of continuing adjustment to past disequilibria. Early in the year the governments of most major countries abandoned attempts to fix exchange rates at negotiated levels. While central banks continued to intervene to some extent, foreign exchange markets played the major role in determining the exchange rates that would clear the market. The process was marked at times by unusually large fluctuations of market exchange rates. ^[2]

Note the reference to the key element in any definition of a free or floating exchange rate system – exchange rates are determined by free market forces. When a government intervenes in the foreign exchange market to influence exchange rates by buying or selling currency the system can be called a managed float or a dirty float. The float is dirty because there has been a deliberate interference with pure market forces of demand and supply.