Traces the ups and downs of the Bretton Woods system and tells the story of its evolution from World War II to today. The authors explain the key mechanisms that drove the system until the United States stopped pegging the dollar to gold in 1971, and how that decision and other developments led to what they call 'Bretton Woods II' arrangements.

After the 2008–9 global financial crisis, reforms to promote stability, social inclusion, and sustainability were promised but not delivered. As a result, the global economic situation, marred by inequality, volatility, and climate breakdown, remains dysfunctional. Now, the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic offers us a second chance. Kevin Gallagher and Richard Kozul-Wright argue that we must grasp it by implementing sweeping reforms to how we govern global money, finance, and trade. Without global leaders prepared to boldly rewrite the rules to promote a prosperous, just, and sustainable post-Covid world economic order – a Bretton Woods moment for the twenty-first century – we risk being engulfed by climate chaos and political dysfunction. This book provides a blueprint for change that no one interested in the future of our planet can afford to miss.

Commentaries by top scholars alongside the most important documents and speeches concerning the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 The two world wars brought an end to a long-standing system of international commerce based on the gold standard. After the First World War, the weaknesses in the gold standard contributed to hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and ultimately World War II. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 arose out of the Allies' desire to design a postwar international economic system that would provide a basis for prosperity, trade, and worldwide economic development. Alongside important documents and speeches concerning the adoption and evolution of the Bretton Woods system, this volume includes lively, readable, original essays on such topics as why the gold standard was doomed, how Bretton Woods encouraged the adoption of Keynesian economics, how the agreements influenced late-twentieth-century ideas of international development, and why the agreements ultimately had to give way to other arrangements.

Recounts the events of the Bretton Woods accords, presents portaits of the two men at the center of the drama, and reveals Harry White's admiration for Soviet economic planning and communications with intelligence officers.

At the close of the Second World War, when industrialized nations faced serious trade and financial imbalances, delegates from forty-four countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in order to reconstruct the international monetary system. In this volume, three generations of scholars and policy makers, some of whom participated in the 1944 conference, consider how the Bretton Woods System contributed to unprecedented economic stability and rapid growth for 25 years and discuss the problems that plagued the system and led to its eventual collapse in 1971. The contributors explore adjustment, liquidity, and transmission under the System; the way it affected developing countries; and the role of the International Monetary Fund in maintaining a stable rate. The authors examine the reasons for the System's success and eventual collapse, compare it to subsequent monetary regimes, such as the European Monetary System, and address the possibility of a new fixed exchange rate for today's world.

The Bretton Woods Transcripts is the verbatim record of meetings of the conference that established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Bretton Woods conference, named after the New Hampshire town where the conference was held in July 1944, began a new era in international economic cooperation that continues today. Delegates from 44 countries attended the conference. They were a high-powered group: many would later become top officials of the IMF and World Bank, finance ministers, central bank governors, even presidents and prime ministers. Among them, the best known then and now was John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century, who chaired the meetings that established the World Bank. The conference transcripts were never intended for publication, and give a rare word-for-word record of what participants at a major international gathering said behind closed doors. -- The Related material on the Publisher's website contain photographs of documents circulated at the 1944 conference, from daily news bulletins to the telephone directory at the Mount Washington Hotel. These documents were not published in the 1948 publication of the conference proceedings because they were considered to be of low interest.--Book Jacket.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is assistant secretary general for economic development at the United Nations and research coordinator for the G24 Intergovernmental Group on International Monetary Affairs and Development. In 2007 he was awarded the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. --Book Jacket.