Confidential Memorandum to President-Elect Richard Nixon

The full text of this December 1968 memorandum appears in The Merits of Flexible Exchange Rates: An Anthology, Leo Melamed, ed. (1988).

THE first few weeks of the new administration that takes over in January, 1969,will offer a unique opportunity to set the dollar free and thereby eliminate for years to come balance of payments restraints on U.S. economic policy. If this opportunity is not seized, it will not recur. Later events may force the administration to take measures that it could at first take voluntarily, but if so, the measures will then involve great political and social cost. . . .

MF

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Milton Friedman

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The full text of this December 1968 memorandum appears in The Merits of Flexible Exchange Rates: An Anthology, Leo Melamed, ed. (1988).

THE first few weeks of the new administration that takes over in January, 1969,will offer a unique opportunity to set the dollar free and thereby eliminate for years to come balance of payments restraints on U.S. economic policy. If this opportunity is not seized, it will not recur. Later events may force the administration to take measures that it could at first take voluntarily, but if so, the measures will then involve great political and social cost. . . .