Bretton Woods

Umm, no, I think not Jean-Claude:

"Perhaps what we need is to go back to the first Bretton Woods, to go back to discipline,'' Mr Trichet said after giving a speech at the Economic Club of New York yesterday. "It's absolutely clear that financial markets need discipline: macroeconomic discipline, monetary discipline, market discipline.''

Fixed exchange rates? Capital controls?

Like that worked so well last time. But even that's not the point.

The point is one of economic liberty. To make such systems work you have to place controls on the ability of individuals to do as they wish with their own money.

This will surprise the younger crowd but up until 1979 you actually needed Government permission to take more than £ 25 out of the country (about £80 in today's money). And they didn't often give that permission either, not if you were simply going on hols.

Even if such fixed rates and controls were indeed good for the economy, something I think grossly unlikley, we shouldn't have them anyway, just on this freedom issue.

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