Imbalance among the Leading Currencies

Abstract

By the end of 1975 the first oil crisis was over. It seemed that shortage and the price of oil was not to bring capitalism to its knees. OPEC, after its initial successes, was following the behaviour pattern of any other cartel. The ambitions of other primary producers to cartelise their products to the detriment of the industrial countries were seen to be vain. Inflation, although still high, was declining and a slow, fitful recovery from the recession was under way. Doomsday, although still to be thought of, had perhaps been postponed. But there was to be no early return to the heady days of growth and rising real income. A harsher, squally, less predictable climate set in. There was to be, it seemed, a period of uncomfortable adaptation.

‘In the imperceptible but eternal march of the world, we regard events as motionless in a moment of vision, too short for us to perceive the motion that is sweeping them on.’ Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.