An Overview of the Original World Money System - "Bretton Woods"
Atlantic City to Bretton Woods
Notable Quotes:
| June 15-30, 1944 - Delegates meet in Atlantic City, New Jersey
To facilitate the work of the forthcoming conference, a preliminary meeting was held at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City. American financial experts assembled there and were joined by specialists from 15 other countries. On June 30 the group traveled by train to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. | |
| | July 1-22, 1944 - Delegates meet in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
Representatives from 44 nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference - popularly known as the Bretton Woods Conference. Discussing the accomplishments, John Maynard Keynes said: "We have had to perform at one and the same time the tasks appropriate to the economist, to the financier, to the politician, to the journalist, to the propagandist, to the lawyer, to the statesman-even, I think, to the prophet and to the soothsayer." |
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OCTOBER 25, 2008
A21st-Century Bretton Woods
Success at globalfinance summit hinges on China's willingness to play role once taken by U.S.
Sebastian Mallaby-Director for the Center for GeoeconomicStudies at the Council on Foreign Relations
Jon's Summary:
China is seen by insiders as the new United States - growing in wealth, on the upswing of prosperity. As a result, they will be given expanded powers in the new economic order (Never mind that it's a communist nation! )
Noteworthy Quotes:
"BrettonWoods conference was a triumph of multilateral coordination."
"Somecountries allow their currencies to float, while others peg loosely to thedollar. Over the past five years or so, this mixture created a variation on the1930s: China, the largest dollar pegger, kept its currency cheap, driving rivalexporters in Asia to hold their exchange rates down also. Thanks to this newversion of competitive currency manipulation, the dollar-peggers racked upgargantuan trade surpluses."
"It will be up to the two great powers -- the U.S. and China-- to fashion the deal that brings China into the heart of the multilateralsystem. Here, too, is an echo of the first Bretton Woods, for underneath thecamouflage of a multilateral process there was a bargain between two nations. Britain,the proud but indebted imperial power, needed American savings to underpinmonetary stability in the postwar era; the quid pro quo was that the U.S. had the final say onthe IMF's design and structure. Today the U.S. must play Britain's role, andChina must play the American one."
"China'sleadership, which sits atop an astonishing $2 trillion in foreign-currencysavings, could trade a promise to help recapitalize Western finance for anexpanded role within the IMF."
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We're In It Together
THE TIMES OF INDIA27 Oct 2008, 0000 hrs IST
Notable Quote:
"The clean-slate alternativeis a new "monitoring authority", as suggested by Singh at ASEM.Either way, fast-growing economies such as China, India and Brazil deserve abigger say in any emergent global financial architecture. But, the startingpoint of inquiry at the summit must be an acknowledgement that everyone's beenburnt by the crisis and recovery won't be far if we can convince ourselveswe're all in this together."
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IMF back in business as Bretton Woods II conference announced
23 October 2008
Notable Quote:
"…The President of the UN General Assembly has also announced ahigh-level task force to review the global financial system, including theWorld Bank and the IMF. Economics Nobel Laureate and Professor JosephStiglitz will chair the panel which aims to suggest steps “to secure a morestable global economic order”. More details on the composition, timetable andterms of reference of the task force will be announced soon after theAssembly’s special meeting on global financial crisis, scheduled for 30 Octoberin New York.
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A World in Need of a New Order
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, October 26, 2008; B07
Notable Quotes:
"Even the Bush administration nowaccepts that serious international economic coordination is needed to overcomethe shattering financial crisis that has reduced the final days of the U.S.election season to slogan-mongering irrelevance."
"...French President NicolasSarkozy has constructivelyhammered away for months at the need for a newBrettonWoods agreement -- that is,for an overhaul of the international financial institutions and rules that haveprevailed for six decades. He finds ways to represent all points on thepolitical spectrum, at different times, or at the same time, as need demands.
When the two met at CampDavid last weekend, PresidentBush reluctantly agreed tohost the first in the series of meetings among global leaders to redesign theglobal financial architecture. It was one last bitter pill to be swallowed byBush, who has had to toss, piecemeal, his unfettered free-market ideology intohistory's junkyard in his eight years in office. This time Bush acted to keephis successor's options open.
Sarkozy wanted to anchor the opening round of talks among the Groupof Eight industrial powersthat unites North America, Europe, Japan and Russia and then hold an expanded14-nation session that would have brought in developing countries led by China,India and Egypt, according to U.S. and French sources. He also suggested thatthe opening talks be held in New York.
Bush ruled out New York, wanting to eliminate any suggestion thatthe new effort would be overseen by the UnitedNations. But he did make a bow to developing countries by agreeing to hosta meeting of the G-20, a forum of affluent and emerging nations that, not socoincidentally, will be headed next year by Britain's Brown."
"Bush's G-20 stratagem brings into the talks one much-neededparticipant -- Saudi Arabia, which was not on Sarkozy's list -- and dilutes thepotentially unhelpful influence of G-8 member Russia."
"But this gathering will be important as a symbol of the launchingof a new era in which new balances between consumers and producers should beestablished and past financial wrongdoing is vigorously exposed and punished.If Bretton Woods II leads to those two results, we should all support it."
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