The Politics of International Economic Relations, 5th Edition

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International Money Management

 

In July 1944, representatives of forty-four nations met on an estate in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create a new international monetary order. Foremost in their minds was the collapse of the international monetary system in the 1930s. In those years, economic nationalism—competitive exchange rate devaluations, formation of competing monetary blocs, and the absence of international cooperation—contributed greatly to economic breakdown, domestic political instability, and war. The goal at Bretton Woods was to establish an international economic system that would prevent another economic and political collapse and another military conflict. It was the international consensus that previous monetary systems ...