The Japanese move triggered a flurry of warnings of an imminent “currency war”. Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, led the charge, closely followed by Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president, and Bahk Jae-wan, South Korea’s finance minister. Today, we live in a world of fiat money and mostly floating rates. The last vestige of the gold standard was swept away in August 1971, when Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. For one country to accuse another of waging a currency war in 2013 is therefore absurd. The war has been going on for more than 40 years and it is a war of all … Continue reading Niall Ferguson