Thus in 1971 Europe was jettisoned from the dollar zone by a United States intent on preserving its hegemony and unwilling to turn to austerity to save Bretton Woods.
cus of the $35/oz of gold value being heavily tested in the late 60s/early 70s
On the one hand, the Bundesbank had a duty--to the Bretton Woods system, to defend the realm of Germany--to see the speculators off and hold the line. On the other hand, the Bundesbank intensely disliked printing Deutsche Marks in defence of exchange rates it had not chosen and in quantities it des…
An international fund would be created to play the role of the world's central bank and issue its currency--the bancor, as Keynes provisionally named it.
a closed, autarkic (meaning self-sufficient) economy [...] may be poor, solitary and undemocratic, but at least it is free of problems caused by other economies, by external deficits or surpluses
Keynes’s proposal was brimming with intellectual power; White was overflowing with the power vested in him by America’s economic and military might. Keynes advocated a global system that could stabilize capitalism for a fabulously long time; White's brief was to push through a system consistent wit…
