The Bretton Woods System

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Recommended: International Monetary Fund

The period referred to as the 'Golden Age' was between 1950 and 1973. There was rapid growth in the US economy during this time, the economies of Europe and Japan also had very high rates of growth. The world’s advanced countries spurred a commodities boom which benefited natural resource-rich countries such as the oil rich ones in the Middle East, as well as the industrial nations of East Asia i.e. Singapore, Thailand, China etc.

The Bretton Woods Conference, which is officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference took place from July 1 to July 22 in 1944, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States. It was a gathering of delegates from 44 different countries that met in order to try and formulate a series of new rules for the post-WWII international monetary system. Through this conference they hoped to be able to restructure the international finance and currency relationships and prevent the economic disaster that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The conference succeeded in achieving two major things by creating the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which are still in use today. The two people most credited with devising the plans for this Bretton Woods system are two of the most important economists of that era, the American minister of state in the U.S. treasury, Harry Dexter White, and the British economist John Maynard Keynes.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was officialy createed when the first 29 countries to become its members signed the Articles of Agreement. came into formal existence in December 1945, when the initial 29 countries to become members signed its Articles of Agreement. It...

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...rt its currency might deplete its international reserves, making it unable to continue strengthening the currency and potentially leave it unable to meet its international obligations.

References

Books

Eichengreen, B. (2007) The European Economy Since 1945: Co-ordinated Capitalism and Beyond, Princeton: Princeton University Press

Heilbroner, R. and Milberg, W. (2008) The Making of Economic Society

Glyn, A. (2006) Capitalism Unleashed, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Marglin, S.A and Schor, J.B. (1990) The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the post-war experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press

WebPages

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Golden_Age_of_Capitalism

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/

http://web.worldbank.org/

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-marshall-plan.htm

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366654/Marshall-Plan

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