Simply... how Bretton Woods reordered the world
The Bretton Woods Conference
In July 1944, as World War Two was drawing to a close, the
world's leading politicians mostly from Northern countries -
gathered to set forth notions of how to reorganize the world
economy. For the first time in human history almost
universal institutions - the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT) - were established to solve global economic
problems. The common view at the Conference was that the
depression of the 1930s and the rise of fascism could be
traced to the collapse of international trade and
isolationist economic policies. The Conference rejected
proposals by the eminent British economist John Maynard
Keynes that would have established a world reserve currency
administered by a central bank and created a more stable and
fair world economy by automatically recycling trade
surpluses to finance trade deficits. Keynes' notion did not
fit the interests of a US eager to take on the role of the
world's economic powerhouse. Instead the Conference opted
for a system based on the free movement of capital and goods
with the US dollar as the international currency. The Fund
and the Bank were limited to managing problems related to
deficits and to currency and capital shortages.
More to the story...
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New International Economic Order
The Debt Crisis
Rollback
The Resistance