He had flown over to London to explain to the European monetary authorities the President’s announcement. Most of the major countries, except Japan, closed their foreign exchange markets after the announcement. European participants, who broke the ice at the meeting, said that they could not re-open their markets until the US decided the new parity of the dollar.
For monetary authorities at that time, the adoption of floating exchange rates was not like the dawn of a new era with full confidence. The then BIS President Zijlstra termed the trial and error among authorities under the floating exchange rate regime “a voyage through uncharted waters,” and that was how all the monetary authorities felt.