First World priorities and the need for nations to coexist in harmony have given rise in each period to a set of rules constituting the international economic order. This is a shifting order, in which national goals move alternatively towards and away from those of an international nature. The objective of the gold standard was to uphold monetary convertibility, if necessary at the expense of national objectives. By contrast, the Bretton Woods system inverted the terms of the equation by making governments responsible for employment and growth. The monetary pendulum is now swinging back again, from nationalism to cosmopolitanism. In the case of Mexico, owing to failures of adaptation, this latest shift has translated into an all-out struggle against inflation that has brought the country to a state of chronic near-stagnation, leaving it trailing in the rear of the world development process. /