In 1970, the US dollar was significantly over valued due to American spending and the Vietnam War. In response to this, in 1971, President Richard Nixon the Group of Ten created and signed the Smithsonian Agreement, which was a revision to the Bretton Woods international monetary system. The Bretton Woods system established the rules for commercial and financial relations anong the world’s largest states. His system was first created in 1944 to help rebuild after WWII. It was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations.  The Group of Ten consisted of closely allied countries which included: UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and Canada. The agreement aimed to maintain fixed exchange rates without using gold and allow fluctuation within other countries. This caused the US dollar to devalue and increase the value of those other countries. The US suspended their convertibility of dollars into gold, which ended the gold standard. After this agreement the value of gold reached $44.20 per ounce in 1971 and rose up to $70.30 per ounce in 1972.The gold standard to the dollar was brought back again in 1973. The end of the system came in 1973 when other major currencies began to float against each other. Countries abandoned any peg to the US dollar. By 1976, all of the developed countries’ currencies were floating and the exchange rates were no longer the primary way governments administered monetary policy. Today many developed countries float, and other emerging countries still peg the value of their currency to the US dollar. Unfortunately the Smithsonian Agreement did not work and foreign exchange markets were forced to close in 1972, but reopened in 1973 which were no longer bound by the Smithsonian Agreement.