[...] Germany's export-led economy could never afford its own genuinely free-floating currency. The reason is simple: if the Deutsche Mark's international value were to be determined freely by the money markets, Germany's surpluses would create demand for its money, which would push up its value until German goods became so expensive abroad that German surpluses would disappear. The ambition to remain a surplus nation could not be served by a free-floating Deutsche Mark.

While the mark was embedded in America's global plan, its value fixed within the Bretton Woods international monetary system, German leaders and officials could behave like the managers of Europe's gleaming factory. They could concentrate solely on making sturdy cars and impressive gadgets, letting America mind global capitalism--exactly as the United States had planned things in the late 1940s. Alas, once the United States jettisoned Bretton Woods, and Europe along with it, German leaders could no longer treat the global environment as they treated the weather--as a natural system impervious to their actions and beliefs. They had to concede that the international economic environment was no longer divinely ordered and independent of what they decided. They had, in other words, to do something to shape that international environment in ways consistent with Germany's continued economic success.