A tribute to the experts

We begin this year the publication of about forty monetary pastiches. They were written between 1967 and 1986 by Mr. Aldo Guetta (1), on the occasion of the IMF meetings held in Paris. Some of his friends who received the stories, took the initiative to publish them as a pamphlet entitled « Le passé plus qu ’ imparfait or the SDR and other stories ».

Luckily, we have received from the author, one copy of the very rare pamphlet issues. We have his authorization to publish them on our website. We publish some of the stories, considering them as archives to enhance this site.

These stories refer to International Monetary Affairs, which were of real importance at the time. The evocation of slow progress in numerous meetings and complex decision process, as reported by Aldo Guetta, will bring back memories to some former officials.

We witness in particular, the convertibility suspension at a fixed rate of the dollar into gold (1971), The generalized currencies floating to which the Smithsonian Agreement will only bring a short break, the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement (1971-1973) and the fixed exchange rate system, the Paris Club and the creation of Special Drawing Rights.

Faced with such general monetary instability, the European Member States sought an implementation of a framework which could provide a basic stability at European level. In particular, it should be noted that the device of the account-cart unit, used to redefine the SDRs value will be subsequently used for the creation of the UCE, the European Account Unit (1975), which was named ECU in 1979 when the European Monetary System started operation. The technical basis of the ECU was used to launch the Euro, the European currency since 2002.

These stories have not been written as meeting reports, but to describe a tense atmosphere of these gatherings. They emphasize the personnality and the commitment of the participants, doing their best to deal with the consequences of the general monetary instability. In publishing these pamphlets, we want to honor, not only the author, Aldo Guetta, but also the memory of the monetary officials, the « Experts » who attended the meetings. These experts,remain anonymous. The publication of these stories is offered as a tribute to each of them.

The monetary instability is here again. Again, the Experts come from around the world or Europe to meet in Washington or Brussels, taking part in always difficult debates. We hope they will be successful this time, thanks to their commitment.

(1) Mr. Aldo Guetta, former director of the Paris IMF Office, ceased his fonctions in 1988