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The Smithsonian Agreement was a December 1971 agreement that adjusted the fixed exchange rates established at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. The other currencies were still pegged to the dollar until March 1973. == Background == The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 established an international fixed exchange rate system based on the gold exchange standard, in which currencies were pegged to the United States dollar, itself convertible into gold at $35/ounce. A negative balance of payments, growing public debt incurred by the Vietnam War and Great Society programs, and monetary inflation by the Federal Reserve caused the dollar to become increasingly overvalued in the 1960s.〔Blanchard (2000), op. cit., Ch. 9, pp. 172–173, and Ch. 23, pp. 447–450.〕 The drain on US gold reserves culminated with the London Gold Pool collapse in March 1968.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Federal Reserve )〕 On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon unilaterally suspended the convertibility of US dollars into gold. The United States had deliberately offered this convertability in 1944; it was put into practice by the U.S. Treasury. The suspension made the dollar effectively a fiat currency. Nixon's administration subsequently entered negotiations with industrialized allies to reassess exchange rates following this development. Meeting in December 1971 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Group of Ten signed the Smithsonian Agreement. The US pledged to peg the dollar at $38/ounce (instead of $35/ounce; in other words: the USD rate lost 7,9 %) with 2.25% trading bands, and other countries agreed to appreciate their currencies versus the dollar: Yen + 16,9 %; Deutsche Mark + 13,6 %, French Franc + 8,6 %, British pound the same, Italian lira + 7,5 %.〔Otmar Emminger: ''DM, Dollar, Währungskrisen – Erinnerungen eines ehemaligen Bundesbankpräsidenten'', 1986, p. 205〕 The group also planned to balance the world financial system using special drawing rights alone. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Smithsonian Agreement」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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