With this move, the U.K. had hoped to alleviate its problems with the overvalued sterling by having other countries purchase large quantities of it to place in their reserves. The world's major powers signaled their departure from the solidity of the gold standard toward inflationism as a solution to economic problems. The insanity of this arrangement was that these governments wanted to inflate while also maintaining the price of their currency stable in terms of gold at prewar levels.
