i was reading an interesting little book last night called " the vandal's crown...... " it explained how the forex market began-- i'll distill the story here : milton friedman was paid $5000.00 to write a paper on the benefits of a free floating currency prices in 1971. the paper was presented to nixon's treasury secretary who liked the idea and the rest is history. best, surfer
hmmm sorry to dissapoint you but i live 100 meters from a place where they used to trade currencies 800 years ago.
The paper referred to but unstated in the text was probably the position paper commissioned by the CME in the fall of 1971, Friedman's 'The Need for Futures Markets in Currencies'. see: http://www.leomelamed.com/Speeches/87-acfx.htm An interesting question is hinted at on several fx broker sites: " In 1967 a Chicago bank refused a college professor by the name of Milton Friedman a loan in pound sterling because he had intended to use the funds to short the British currency." Was Friedman an fx revolutionary/guerilla activist out to pervert the monetary system in general, only that of the US of A, only the currencies of the rest of the world, and/or the banks' fx trading monopoly ? Is Friedman the true patriot when later in the 70s the oil cartel's attempt to break the US$ with gold failed ? Is Friedman needed once more to face the threat of the oil Euro 'Russia' seeks and others support ? Should Friedman be sainted as our patron of fx trading ? Thanks Surfer for the heads-up, loaned 'The Vandal Kings' from the library and enjoying the read. Wallace.
not everything is invented in the USA dear friends. I live in Brugge (Bruges as most english speaking people know it) around 1200 this city was, together with Venice, the main trading center in Europe. Lots of merchants came here from all over Europe, especially lots of Italians. Each city in Italy used different currencies. Trades of currencies and goods as well as promisary notes took place in a hall owned by the family Van der Beurse. This was the world's first exchange and the word beurs (in dutch) bourse (in french) börse (in german) were derived from that family name. Forwards have been around for hundreds of years in Europe.
Seemingly important, contemporary forex trading began in the US of A in the 1970s. Further, on page 7 of 'The Vandal Kings' is the example of the 'first' option/forward 'invented' by the Greek Thales of Meletus, predating Aristotle. Need we also consider cattle, cowrie shell and Yap stones currency trading or just look to China's several thousands years of forex trading for the 'true' beginning ? Wallace.
i'm talking about a real exchange here. What do you think people in europe had been doing all along in the last century. Try to read some books by Kostolany and you will see forex speculation has been around for a long long time.
was looking at amazon.com but apparently they dont exist in english. Some explanation: this guy is over 80 years old (could be that he died) and has been a speculator all his life, in his books he tells about lots of stories of forex speculation he did over the years in the last century.
It seems like Americans notoriously believe anything has started in the US of A. This may apply for the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, but for many other, more constructive and civilized things, such as trading, the US of A ain't the first in the world to do anything, and Wall St was not the first exchange, either. As for forex, as by definition money trading, I think it was done in ancient Egypt almost 5,000 years ago, 10 times the existence time of the mighty US of A. Not to mention all the money traders which Jesus threw out of "his father's temple" almost 2,000 years ago, of course not as old as the Egyptian trade, but certainly more known and comparatively contemporary. -S