In his time as a Treasury official in the 1960s he had laboured to maintain the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, which had built an international monetary system round pegging the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. When this began to founder he went along with a temporary suspension and then, in 1973, with decisive decoupling, but longed for some system of fixed exchange rates.
在20世紀60年代作為財政部官員時，保羅·沃爾克曾努力維護1944年的《布雷頓森林協定》。它建立了一個國際貨幣體系，將美元與黃金的匯率固定在每盎司35美元。當它開始失敗時，保羅選擇暫時暫停它，然后在1973年，他決心讓美元與黃金分離，希望建立某種固定匯率制度。
Instead, the dollar was allowed to float. To him floating exchange rates were fundamentally dangerous, an open invitation to countries to manipulate their currencies— and so inherently unstable that they undermined the stability of governments, too. It was probably his wartime adolescence that made him yearn for such a rules-based world. But in so far as he managed to impose rules himself, they were a success. After 1983 the economy mostly grew without inflation and political leaders, by and large, learned to defer to the central bank on monetary policy.
相反，允許美元浮動。對他來說，浮動匯率制非常危險，這就是公開邀請其他國家操縱它們的貨幣，其內在的不穩定性也會破壞政府的穩定。保羅·沃爾克青春期時發生了戰爭，這可能是他渴望一個以規則為基礎的世界的原因。但是就他自己強加的規則而言，它們是成功的。1983年后，經濟大多數時候在沒有通貨膨脹的情況下取得增長，而且，總的來說， 政治領袖都學著在貨幣政策上聽從中央銀行的意見。
What worried him more as the years passed was a growing lack of trust in and respect for institutions in general, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the presidency. America sometimes seemed to be in a mess in every direction. Every direction, that was, except the coast of Florida, where he might get a big plump tarpon on his line, or the sparkling, ever-beckoning salmon rivers of Maine.
隨著時間推移，使他更擔心的是，人們對機構的信任和尊重越來越少，從最高法院到國會，再到總統。有時美國在每個方向上都一團糟。 每個方向，除了佛羅里達的海岸，在那里，他可以釣到又大又肥的大海鰱，也可以釣到緬因州波光粼粼、永遠誘人的河里的鮭魚。
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