Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was ridiculed in financial circles when he tried to lower long-term interest rates through a certain bond-buying maneuver. His desire is understandable. Rising rates, particularly for home mortgages, hurt Republicans on the affordability issue. But there’s a better—and more lasting—way to lower the cost of borrowing money that would help not only the U.S. but also economies around the globe.

Secretary Bessent and new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh should sit down together and formulate a firm principle that would govern monetary policy: Declare that henceforth the prime goal of the Fed and the Treasury is to achieve a stable value for the dollar. The Fed would no longer subscribe to the falsehood that prosperity causes inflation and no longer try to depress economic activity in the name of fighting inflation. Money is supposed to measure value the way a clock measures time, a scale measures weight and a ruler measures distance. We all know that markets work best with fixed weights and measures. The size of a gallon doesn’t change each day, nor does the number of inches in a foot, nor should the value of a currency.

The very definition of monetary inflation is reducing the value of a currency. Say you agree to exchange a bottle of wine for three dozen eggs, but then the currency is devalued and you get only two dozen. You’ve been cheated. Or, depending where the currency goes, you could end up with four dozen eggs and the other person is cheated.

When people trust a country’s currency, interest rates are lower than in untrustworthy countries. The currency that has best preserved its purchasing power over the last century is the Swiss Franc. Today, the yield on a ten-year Swiss government bond is little more than 0.4%. By contrast, the U.S. 10-year Treasury is about 4.7%, ten times the rate of its Swiss counterpart. In the early 1900s, when the British pound was seen as better than gold, British government bonds with no maturity had yields of 2.5%.

An announcement by Bessent and Warsh that a stable dollar is now our primary goal would see the general level of interests rates lower than those we have today. This would be true even with our immense government borrowing needs. As time passes and the now-hard dollar gains more and more credibility, other countries would increasingly find it convenient to fix their currencies to ours. Having governments focus on stable currencies would create conditions for far greater economic growth.

To that end, Bessent and Warsh should attack the myth so cherished by the IMF, that devaluations make countries more competitive and prosperous. They actually hinder the creation of prosperity.

How to achieve stability? The environment isn’t right for a new gold standard, even though the yellow metal is the best barometer for inflation. The Fed could state that it is guided by the price of gold, as well as by an array of commodities, not to mention other currencies, especially the Swiss franc.

The key is that the world would know that a stable, reliable dollar is now the goal.