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United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference
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The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as Bretton Woods conference, was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.
The conference was held from 1 July to 22 July 1944, when the agreements were signed to set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As a result of the conference, the Bretton Woods system of exchange rate management was set up, which remained in place until the early 1970s.
Bretton Woods Conference took place in July 1944, but did not become operative until 1959, when all the European currencies became convertible.
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Encyclopedia
The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as Bretton Woods conference, was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.
The conference was held from 1 July to 22 July 1944, when the agreements were signed to set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As a result of the conference, the Bretton Woods system of exchange rate management was set up, which remained in place until the early 1970s.
Purposes and goals
The Bretton Woods Conference took place in July 1944, but did not become operative until 1959, when all the European currencies became convertible. Under this system, the IMF and the IBRD were established. The IMF was developed as a permanent international body. The summary of agreements from 22 July 1944 states, "The nations should consult and agree on international monetary changes which affect each other. They should outlaw practices which are agreed to be harmful to world prosperity, and they should assist each other to overcome short-term exchange difficulties." The IBRD was created to speed up post-war reconstruction, to aid political stability, and to foster peace. This was to be fulfilled through the establishment of programs for reconstruction and development.
The main terms of this agreement were:
- Formation of the IMF and the IBRD (presently part of the World Bank).
- Adjustable peg Foreign exchange market rates system: The exchange rates were fixed, with the provision of changing them if necessary.
- Currencies were required to be convertible for trade related and other current account transactions. The governments, however, had the power to regulate ostentatious capital flows.
- As it was possible that exchange rates thus established may not be favourable to a country's Balance of payments position, the governments had the power to revise them by up to 10%.
- All member countries were required to subscribe to the International Monetary Fund's capital.
Encouraging open markets
The seminal idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was the notion of open markets. In Henry Morgenthau's farewell remarks at the conference, he stated that the establishment of the IMF and the World Bank marked the end of economic nationalism. This meant countries would maintain their national interest, but trade blocks and economic spheres of influence would no longer be their means. The second idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was joint management of the Western political-economic order. Meaning that the foremost industrial democratic nations must lower barriers to trade and the movement of capital, in addition to their responsibility to govern the system.
Monetary order in a post-war world
The need for postwar Western economic order was resolved with the agreements made on monetary order and open system of trade at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference which allowed for the synthesis of Britain's desire for full employment and economic stability and the United States' desire for free trade.
Failed proposals
International Trade Organization
The Conference also proposed the creation of an International Trade Organization (ITO) to establish rules and regulations for international trade. The ITO would have complemented the other two Bretton Woods proposed international bodies: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
The ITO charter was agreed on at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Employment (held in Havana, Cuba, in March 1948), but was not ratified by the U.S. Senate. As a result, the ITO never came into existence.
However, in 1995, the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations established the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the replacement body for GATT. The GATT principles and agreements were adopted by the WTO, which was charged with administering and extending them.
International Clearing Union
John Maynard Keynes proposed the ICU as a way to regulate the balance of trade. His concern was that countries with a trade deficit would be unable to climb out of it, paying ever more interest to service their ever greater debt, and therefore stiffling global growth. The ICU would effectively be a bank with its own currency (the "bancor"), exchangeable with national currencies at a fixed rate. Nations would be the unit for accounting between nations, so their trade deficits or surpluses could be measured by it. On top of that, each country would have an overdraft facility in its "bancor" account with the ICU. Keynes proposed having a maximum overdraft of half the average trade size over five years. If a country went over that, it would be charged interest, obliging a country to reduce its currency value and prevent capital exports. But countries with trade surpluses would also be charged interest at 10% if their surplus was more than half the size of their permitted overdraft, obliging them to increase their currency values and export more capital. If, at the year's end, their credit exceeded the maximum (half the size of the overdraft in surplus) the surplus would be confiscated.
Lionel Robbins reported that "it would be difficult to exaggerate the electrifying effect on thought throughout the whole relevant apparatus of government ... nothing so imaginative and so ambitious had ever been discussed". However, Harry Dexter White, representing America which was the world's biggest creditor said "We have been perfectly adamant on that point. We have taken the position of absolutely no." Instead he proposed an International Stabilisation Fund (now the International Monetary Fund), which would place the burden of maintaining the balance of trade on the deficit nations, and imposing no limit on the surplus that rich countries could accumulate. White also suggested an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now part of the World Bank, which would provide capital for economic reconstruction after the war.
White managed to ensure the US had special veto powers over any major decision made by the IMF or the World Bank, meaning effectively that their "conditionalities" in the way of strict institutional reforms are never imposed. Furthermore, the IMF insists that the foreign exchange reserves maintained by other nations are held in the form of dollars, so no matter how much debt the US accumulates, its economy will not collapse.
Negotiators
- The USA was represented at the conference by Harry Dexter White
- The UK was represented at the conference by John Maynard Keynes
Quotes
- "The economic health of every country is a proper matter of concern to all its neighbors, near and far."
— U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the opening of Bretton Woods
See also
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