Changing Fortunes - Hardcover

Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten enjoyed remarkable careers as economic statesmen for the United States and Japan. Both Volcker, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman, and Gyohten, former vice minister for international affairs at the all-powerful Japanese Ministry of Finance, are graduates of Princeton who began their careers in the 1950s when the United States was beginning to assert itself as an economic superpower and Japan was still rebuilding after the war. Changing Fortunes is the recollections of Volcker and Gyohten about the international monetary affairs of the last four decades as seen from the American and Japanese perspectives.

The book, which is based on a series of lectures given at the Woodrow Wilson School, gives an inside view of all the significant economic events of the last four decades, including the formation of the new monetary system that was negotiated at Bretton Woods in 1944, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1970s, and the interest rate shocks of the late '70s and early '80s. Anyone interested in understanding the current state of world economic affairs will find Changing Fortunes an extremely useful primer. --Harry C. Edwards

Insightful appraisals of the global monetary order from a pair of technocrats who played key roles in shaping its past, present, and future. This study grew out of a series of seminars at Princeton conducted by Volcker (former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) and Gyohten (until his recent retirement, a senior official in Japan's Ministry of Finance) during the spring of 1991. Here, they take turns surveying the postwar history of the world's monetary system, from the Bretton Woods era of stable currencies through the latter-day problems caused by floating exchange rates. Along their way, the authors assess the impact of so-called oil shocks, the Smithsonian accord (which put paid to the gold standard), the Latin American debt crisis, and other landmark events. Covered as well is the emergence of Japan and Germany and its EC partners as economic powers to be reckoned with, and the relative decline of a once- dominant US. Volcker and Gyohten both tend to address their common subject in ways that conform to, if not confirm, national stereotypes. Throughout, the American is blunt, albeit fundamentally optimistic about prospects for the US and the wider world. By contrast, Gyohten, while candid about the altered state of the ties that still bind Japan and the US, is circumspect, even conciliatory, stressing the historic success of a grand alliance while soft-pedaling the uncertainties that cloud its future. The odd couple agree on any number of points--that strong currencies afford a competitive edge on the home front as well as in international commerce; that regional trading blocs could lead to undesirable protectionism; that monetary and fiscal policies must be coordinated on a supranational basis, etc. Illuminating and accessible perspectives on a topic of vital interest to us all. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.