Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a friend of mine said he was in a meeting back when Javascript was being standardized. Mike Cowlishaw proposed that Javascript use REXX's Decimal type instead of IEEE 754. Everyone thought that was a really bad stupid idea.
It probably is when it's about "instead". IEEE 754 floating point computations are much much faster (given hardware support) while the precision is sufficient for most of the applications that don't have to deal with money.
IE. If we provide a decimal type as a default. Then everyone will use it and it'll be 'slow'. Thus this is a bad idea. So we should not make that even an option. Because IEEE 754 is fast and fast is 'good'
Frankly that decision was the worst language decision ever made bar none.