A second structural change that undermined monetary management was the decline of US hegemony. The United States was no longer the dominant economic power it had been for nearly two decades. By the mid-1960s, Europe and Japan had become autonomous international economic powers. With global reserves higher than those of the United States, higher growth and trade, and per capita income close to that of the United States, Europe and Japan have narrowed the gap between them and the United States. In 1967, there was an attack on the pound sterling and a gold race in the “sterling zone”, and on November 17, 1967, the British government was forced to devalue the pound. US President Lyndon Baines Johnson was on the verge of facing a stark choice, either he could introduce protectionist measures, including travel taxes, export subsidies and budget cuts – or he could accept the risk of a “race for gold” and the dollar. In 1947, under pressure from the United States, he eliminated exchange controls, so that foreign holders of books could convert them into dollars. After just six weeks, the UK reinstated exchange controls to protect what was left of its dollar and gold reserves. The impact and effectiveness of the efforts of the major industrialized countries to achieve international political coordination since the Louvre Agreement are in some ways difficult to assess, especially given the wide range of macroeconomic issues that cover these efforts. On the one hand, the short-term variability of exchange rates between the three main currencies since the Louvre Convention is substantially the same as in previous periods, which dates back to the beginnings of the general regime in 1973 (Table 2). . . .