Читать книгу Foreign Exchange: The Complete Deal - James McDowell. Sharpe - Страница 6

An exchange rate system is any system which determines the conditions under which one currency can be exchanged for another. Fixed, floating and adjustable peg systems (of which there are various) are the three main systems available. All systems are designed to facilitate trade and investment across national boundaries.

To understand the foreign exchange systems in the 21st century we need to see where we have come from and why. In this overview I will start from the end of the First World War, which allows us to look at all the main examples of exchange rate systems up to the present day. In essence, every generation has wrestled with the same problem: namely, how to set up an effective system to determine how exchange rates should be calculated and how deficits should be financed.

No system has been without its problems, hence the variety of approaches that have been developed, although these problems have as much to do with an extraordinary passage of events in this period as to specific defects in any particular system. These events include two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Great Depression, oil shocks and rampant inflation. Over this period the social and political landscape has changed dramatically; political accountability is now widespread and, as mentioned in the preface, events that would have been viewed as inevitable or just economic misfortune in the past are now judged to be mismanagement. For this reason I have paid particular attention to the role of central banks, especially their intervention in the markets.

While the period is littered with crises I have only covered pivotal moments, or events that illustrate a key issue. It is not intended to be a complete history of foreign exchange but rather to provide a rich insight into what actually drives the foreign exchange markets. Each generation is inclined to view its circumstances as something unprecedented or unique, but, as we will see, this is rarely the case.

At the end of the chapter, the overview of the route from fixed exchange rates to a floating rate system is followed by a specific look at the UK foreign exchange experience since 1960.

This chapter will make some reference to countries’ current accounts and, therefore, before we move on to the historical overview of the transition from fixed exchange rates to floating exchange rates, it is important to introduce the idea of current accounts here.