Abstract
CONSIDERABLE FLEXIBILITY in exchange rates has marked the seventies. A series of events, starting with the appreciation of the deutsche mark in 1969, and including the realignment in the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971 and a second realignment, have brought the world into a period of controlled flexibility of rates. Flexible rates were the mechanism economists had long advocated for attaining external balance,' but the experience in the last few years has led many to reconsider it.
