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Like anything worthwhile the economic solution to the problems of the world wars had a long genesis. A major problem was the role of gold, another problem was the role of the dollar. By 1944 US was supreme. It held five sevenths of the world's gold reserves and was overwhelmingly the world's creditor nation. Britain, however, was a debtor nation which reduced its influence. Economics is an esoteric subject with little popular appeal. This resulted in two protagonists having overwhelming authority- Harry Dexter White for the United States and John Maynard Keynes for the British Empire. Harry White's family came from Lithuania, were Jewish, and left because of the pogroms. They established themselves in the US in the hardware business. Harry White gradually made his own way to Washington via academia. He knew exactly what he wanted. Fixed world wide exchange rates controlled by the US and a quota system which would allow the exchange rates to be stable. He was a believer in gold and with the US holding five sevenths of the reserves and being the world's creditor nation would lead to the US controlling world trade through the dollar.
White was a globalist. He saw the whole world included in his system, including Russia with whom he negotiated via a representative who had to report back to Moscow which made for difficulties.
White worked with Keynes who was much more a colleague than a protagonist. They worked in tandem and mostly in agreement. Two institutions came out of Bretton Woods which exist to this day, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Here there was a profound disagreement with White wanting world trade to be controlled by the US and the dollar. Keynes wanted a more neutral system which he called bancor and excluded the dominance of any one nation.
White with the backing of the President and Morgenthau, his Secretary of State, won. There was nothing that Keynes, the representative of an important debtor nation could do.
80 years after Bretton Woods the fixed exchange rates have gone in 1971 as the US become a debtor nation with the Vietnam War. However the importance of the IMF remains. The problem is that the dollar has advantages in world trade which are being challenged by Russia and China who claim with some justification that US is a debtor nation out of control. Russia and China have their problems but they are probably right that a more neutral system, as advocated by Keynes, be created.
