Floating exchange rates destabilise trade and investment by wrenching relative prices away from their fundamental values (that is, from the values that would put the corresponding exchange rates at purchasing-power parity).
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With floating exchange rates, the trade constraint was removed.
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But there is little appetite to abandon the world of floating exchange rates, while free trade talks, also encouraged at Bretton Woods, have stalled.
Absent a common currency in the form of the dollar, the U.S. would still be a rich country, but far less vibrant for all the wasted effort necessary to facilitate interstate trade given 50 different floating money concepts.
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There are bills and proposals floating around the Hill, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Commerce Department.
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In industrial countries, remarkably little evidence exists to suggest that the volatility of floating exchange rates does in fact harm trade or investment.
By devaluing a currency in a floating exchange rate environment, the result is that trade booms and foreign reserves balloon.
As finance minister, she is blamed for rising inflation and trade-union militancy, both triggered by the floating of the Sri Lankan rupee.
Just as a floating foot and minute would lead to a lot of building and cooking errors, floating money would and does foster a great deal of malinvestment and trade disharmony for turning voluntary, economy-enhancing exchange with stable money as the measuring stick into something where trading partners are increasingly at odds.
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There are two draft bills floating around Congress, and policy recommendation reports are coming soon from the Federal Trade Commission and the Commerce Department.
Moreover, abandoning the gold standard in favor of free floating currencies was supposed to eliminate currency crises and lead to an automatic adjustment in trade imbalances.
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