Jacob Besser-Chapter 11-Question 6

The thing that struck me the most about this chapter is how global currency trade can be used to make money so quickly and how detrimental the gold standard was for the global economy. It was interesting to see how having a stable exchange rate between currencies actually discouraged economic growth. Knowing what I know now about the business cycle it makes sense that recessions, deflation, and inflation are actually healthy for an economy and that having all currency tied down to a fixed resource ties down the growth and restricts the natural business cycle. The questions that I have are: How does one benefit from buying and selling currency and does this work the same way as buying and selling stocks? and What caused the ERM to fail and why?