Discipline in Reserve Currency Countries: The United Kingdom and the United States

This chapter first reviews the conduct of economic policy in the United Kingdom in the runup to the devaluation of sterling in November 1967. It provides brief summaries of the articles the author published as a Bank of Japan economist monitoring the UK economy with respect to problems in its policy management as the second most important reserve currency country in the post-World War II period. It then briefly reviews the conduct of United States domestic and international monetary policies in the aftermath of the British pound devaluation, with some remarks on how the US central bank was run by Chairman William McChesney Martin and his successor Arthur Burns.