None of this is meant to imply that the actual policies adopted in these instances were inappropriate. Indeed, in most cases they were probably the best the governments in question could do. The United States did not actively attempt to strengthen the dollar after 1981; Brazil should have allowed the real to depreciate in 1999; the EMS members in 1992 should have devalued, and so on. But that is not the relevant question. The relevant question is: could these outcomes have been improved by international cooperation? Could the United States and its principal partners have cooperated more organically before 1985 (when growing concern led to the Plaza Accord)? Could Brazil and Argentina have worked out a collaborative arrangement to allow both their misaligned currencies to depreciate? Could Germany and its EMS partners have developed a cooperative response to German unification? If so, could such cooperation have moderated the currency misalignments, and mitigated their effects on trade and other policies? My answer is a qualified yes. I think that the evidence favors the view that strongly misaligned currencies create problems not just for their home countries but for their economic partners, and in some instances for regional or global economic relations more generally; and that inter-governmental cooperation could in principle help avoid some of the problems that arise as a result.