In a similar vein, floating exchange rates were almost universally dismissed and ignored, as summarized by US economist Richard Cooper: “Initially Friedman was nearly alone in his views. Most contemporary economists favored fixed exchange rates and feared the instabilities that flexible exchange rates might bring, or reveal.” Until the 1960s, one historian has argued, “it was widely accepted both by academic and IMF economists that floating exchange rates were a species of law-breaking behavior.” This skeptical view was even more pronounced among politicians and businesspeople than among economists. With the exception of France under de Gaulle in the 1960s, who invoked the gold standard idea, and Canada’s experience with its floating currency during the 1950s, both were entirely ignored.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 427