The International Monetary System: Pluralism and Interdependence

Abstract

Robert Triffin is my dear friend and long-time colleague, at Harvard, mainly at Yale, and in Washington. He is a few years my senior, and although that difference seems to diminish with time, I still look up to him as a fount of experience, judgement and wisdom. He tutored me, informally and irregularly to be sure, in international economics and finance. Like all the world, I marvelled at his prescience in the 1950s and 1960s about the gold exchange standard. At my urging, he became a consultant to the Kennedy Council of Economic Advisers, and together we sought to advance the cause of internationalised liquidity in the US government. We did not achieve our goals, but we did nudge developments somewhat in a Triffinesque direction.