Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

When countries are not on the gold standard, this foreign-exchange disequilibrium (that is, the decline in the value of one monetary unit in relation to the other unit) can go on to very wide fluctuations—in fact, to whatever degree is necessary to restore the trade equilibrium by encouraging importers to buy in the other country because its money is so low in value that the prices of goods in that country are irresistible to importers in the other country.

But when countries are on the gold standard, the result is quite different. In this case the value of a country’s money will never go below the amount equal to the cost of shipping gold between the two countries. An importer who wishes to pay his trade partner in the other country will not offer more and more of his own country’s money for foreign-exchange bills, but will bid up the price of such bills only to the point where it becomes cheaper for him to buy gold from a bank and pay the costs of shipping and insurance on the gold as it goes to his foreign creditor. Thus, on the gold standard, foreign-exchange quotations do not fluctuate widely, but move only between the two gold points which are only slightly above (gold export point) and slightly below (gold import point) parity (the legal gold relationship of the two currencies).

Since the cost of packing, shipping and insuring gold used to be about 1/2 percent of its value, the gold export and import points were about this amount above and below the parity point. In the case of the dollar-pound relationship, when parity was at £ 1 = $4,866, the gold export point was about $4,885 and the gold import point was about $4,845. Thus:

Gold export point

(excess demand for bills by importers)

$4,885

Parity

$4,866

Gold import point

(excess supply of bills by exporters)

$4,845

The situation which we have described is overly simplified. In practice the situation is made more complicated by several factors. Among these are the following: (1) middlemen buy and sell foreign exchange for present or future delivery as a speculative activity; (2) the total supply of foreign exchange available in the market depends on much more than the international exchange of commodities. It depends on the sum total of all international payments, such as interest, payment for services, tourist spending, borrowings, sales of securities, immigrant remittances, and so on; (3) the total exchange balance depends on the total of the relationships of all countries, not merely between two.

The flow of gold from country to country resulting from unbalanced trade tends to create a situation which counteracts the flow. If a country exports more than it imports so that gold flows in to cover the difference, this gold will become the basis for an increased quantity of money, and this will cause a rise of prices within the country sufficient to reduce exports and increase imports. At the same time, the gold by flowing out of some other country will reduce the quantity of money there and will cause a fall in prices within that country. These shifts in prices will cause shifts in the flow of goods because of the obvious fact that goods tend to flow to higher-priced areas and cease to flow to lower-priced areas. These shifts in the flow of goods will counteract the original unbalance in trade which caused the flow of gold. As a result, the flow of gold will cease, and a balanced international trade at slightly different price levels will result. The whole process illustrates the subordination of internal price stability to stability of exchanges. It was this subordination which was rejected by most countries after 1931. This rejection was signified by (a) abandonment of the gold standard at least in part, (b) efforts at control of domestic prices, and (c) efforts at exchange control. All these were done because of a desire to free the economic system from the restricting influence of a gold-dominated financial system.

This wonderful, automatic mechanism of international payments represents one of the greatest social instruments ever devised by man. It requires, however, a very special group of conditions for its effective functioning and, as we shall show, these conditions were disappearing by 1900 and were largely wiped away as a result of the economic changes brought about by the First World War. Because of these changes it became impossible to restore the financial system which had existed before 1914. Efforts to restore it were made with great determination, but by 1933 they had obviously failed, and all major countries had been forced to abandon the gold standard and automatic exchanges.

When the gold standard is abandoned, gold flows between countries like any other commodity, and the value of foreign exchanges (no longer tied to gold) can fluctuate much more widely. In theory an unbalance of international payments can be rectified either through a shift in exchange rates or through a shift in internal price levels. On the gold standard this rectification is made by shifts in exchange rates only between the gold points. When the unbalance is so great that exchanges would be forced beyond the gold points, the rectification is made by means of changing internal prices caused by the fact that gold flows at the gold points, instead of the exchanges passing beyond the gold points. On the other hand, when a currency is off the gold standard, fluctuation of exchanges is not confined between any two points but can go indefinitely in either direction. In such a case, the unbalance of international payments is worked out largely by a shift in exchange rates and only remotely by shifts in internal prices. In the period of 1929-1936, the countries of the world went off gold because they preferred to bring their international balances toward equilibrium by means of fluctuating exchanges rather than by means of fluctuating price levels. They feared these last because changing (especially falling) prices led to declines in business activity and shifts in the utilization of economic resources (such as labor, land, and capital) from one activity to another.

The reestablishment of the balance of international payments when a currency is off gold can be seen from an example. If the value of the pound sterling falls to $4.00 or $3.00, Americans will buy in England increasingly because English prices are cheap for them, but Englishmen will buy in America only with reluctance because they have to pay so much for American money. This will serve to rectify the original excess of exports to England which gave the great supply of pound sterling necessary to drive its value down to $3.00. Such a depreciation in the exchange value of a currency will cause a rise in prices within the country as a result of the increase in demand for the goods of that country.

THE SITUATION BEFORE 1914

The key to the world situation in the period before 1914 is to be found in the dominant position of Great Britain. This position was more real than apparent. In many fields (such as naval or financial) the supremacy of Britain was so complete that it almost never had to be declared by her or admitted by others. It was tacitly assumed by both. As an unchallenged ruler in these fields, Britain could afford to be a benevolent ruler. Sure of herself and of her position, she could be satisfied with substance rather than forms. If others accepted her dominance in fact, she was quite willing to leave to them independence and autonomy in law.

This supremacy of Britain was not an achievement of the nineteenth century alone. Its origins go back to the sixteenth century—to the period in which the discovery of America made the Atlantic more important than the Mediterranean as a route of commerce and a road to wealth. In the Atlantic, Britain’s position was unique, not merely because of her westernmost position, but much more because she was an island. This last fact made it possible for her to watch Europe embroil itself in internal squabbles while she retained freedom to exploit the new worlds across the seas. On this basis, Britain had built up a naval supremacy which made her ruler of the seas by 1900. Along with this was her preeminence in merchant shipping which gave her control of the avenues of world transportation and ownership of 39 percent of the world’s oceangoing vessels (three times the number of her nearest rival).