Customer Reviews

Currencies and Politics in the United States, Germany, and Japan

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Henning gives a comprehensive account of the foreign exchange markets in the 1970s and 1980s, covering in depth the developments of the international financial system as it came to terms with the fragmentation of Bretton Woods. As a reference work to refresh the memory on developments (particularly surrounding the Plaza and Louvre periods) it is a useful account.

Aside from the dated nature of the book (analysis ends basically with Clinton's accession to the presidency) there are some other problems. Analysing the US, Germany and Japan in distinct sections means that there is a rather disjointed approach to the work - to get a coherent account of international co-operation in the mid 1980s requires some skipping back and forth in the text, for instance. In addition, the analysis of policy and politics (whatever one thinks of the author's conclusions) comes across more as an afterthought to the chronology.

The detailed accounts of policy making in the 1980s makes this a useful reference book to those studying currency markets, but it should not be thought of as particularly strong when it comes to analytics.