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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (45880)	2/5/1999 2:09:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Hi Mike, wondering if you know the answer to a question that has me stumped. I was playing with this web site, you can plot exchange rates for different currencies, some of which have data back to 1971. pacific.commerce.ubc.ca I noticed something peculiar happened to the U.S. dollar in 1985, but I have no idea what it was. Take the swiss franc as an example (German mark works, too, French francs is the most dramatic, and Japanese yen, but not as dramatically). To plot it yourself, uncheck the checkmark on "Last 365 days", as well as put starting year as 1971. In 1971, the exhange rate was 4.25 swiss francs/dollar, it declined to a low of about 1.6 in 1979, peaked dramatically at 2.75 in 1985, then declined dramatically to 1.5 in 1987, and has been bouncing around that level ever since. With the Deutschmark, 1971 exchange rate is about 3.6, declining to about 1.75 in 1979-80, peaking dramatically in 1985 at 3.25, then declining dramatically to 1.75 in 1987, where it has been bouncing ever since. Similar for the French franc, but much more dramatic, because it started low in 1971, only about 5.5 to the dollar, the dramatic rise began in 1980, in 1985 the rate was 10 francs to the dollar, then a dramatic decline, down to 6 in 1987, and again, it has been bouncing around that ever since. Yen to dollar does not show the same type of peak in 1985, but in 1985, the yen/dollar ratio also declined dramatically, from 250 in 1985 to 125 in 1987, and it has bounced around there ever since. What happened?