This paper reviews key findings of the IMF’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1962. The report highlights that the year 1961 was one of general expansion in the industrial countries. In the United States and Canada, industrial production and real national product resumed their upward course during the spring of 1961, following the mild recession of 1960. Expansion continued in Europe and Japan, although at a slower rate than in the earlier year, as production approached the limits of the available supplies of labor.

During the twentieth century, foreign-exchange intervention was sometimes used in an attempt to solve the fundamental trilemma of international finance, which holds that countries cannot simultaneously pursue independent monetary policies, stabilize their exchange rates, and benefit from free cross-border financial flows. Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances—most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard—and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.

This paper reviews key findings of the IMF’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1963. The report highlights that during the course of 1962, economic activity continued to expand in most industrial countries. In the United States, there was some slowdown in production, but final purchases rose almost as much as during 1961, and a revival of activity set in during the early part of 1963. In continental Europe, a climate of general prosperity continued to prevail.

This paper reviews key findings of the IMF’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1966. The report highlights that the year 1965 was characterized by substantial, although somewhat uneven, growth in the world economy. For the first time in many years, the rise in industrial output in the United States and Canada was markedly higher than in the other industrial countries, where, in the first half of the year, economic progress was generally rather slow. However, after midyear, economic activity accelerated both in the United States and in the European area.

This paper reviews key findings of the IMF’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1971. The report highlights that the performance of the world economy during 1970 and the first part of 1971 was less than satisfactory in certain major respects. Performance was heavily dominated by developments in the larger industrial countries. The expansion of total world output proceeded at a slow and irregular pace, primarily because of the 1969–70 recession and ensuing moderate pickup of economic activity in the United States.