The international monetary crisis of 1971 began on August 15, 1971 with the announcement of President Nixon's "new economic policy." Domestically, it involved most dramatically a 90-day wage and price freeze. Internationally, is involved most dramatically the suspension of the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold for foreign central banks, together with the imposition of a temporary import tax surcharge intended to remain in force until the European countries and Japan had made realignments of their currency values in terms of the dollar satisfactory to the United States. Following 4 months of so-called dirty floating of foreign currencies against the U.S. dollar, the crisis was finally resolved by the so-called Smithsonian agreement of December 18. This entailed a realignment of the other major currencies against the dollar on more or less the scale the U.S. administration had been seeking, an 81/2 percent increase in the U.S. price of gold to be implemented at some future date-changes which in the aggregate left the average monetary value of gold more or less unchanged. It also included a widening of the band within which market rates of exchange can fluctuate about their official parities from the previous standard of under 1 percent each way to a maximum of 21/4 percent each way. The 1971 international monetary crisis was only the latest in a series of international monetary crises that have been occurring with almost monotonous annual periodicity since the mid-1960s. And while President Nixon hailed the Smithsonian agreement as "the greatest international monetary agreement in the history of mankind"-which it may have been given the president's rather elastic standards for judging the works of his own administration-there is no reason to doubt, and every reason to expect, that there will be at least one more major international monetary crisis in the not too distant future, although the principle of honor among thieves as applied in international politics is likely to ensure that any overt crisis will be postponed until after the coming presidential election. The floating of the pound in June 1972 was an uncomfortable surprise, but Britain is now too unimportant for its actions to constitute a crisis. My reasons for this view will, I hope, become apparent from the subsequent analysis. I shall attempt to place the international monetary crisis of 1971 in the context of the general theory of international monetary organization and the broad historical evolution of the international