The European Economic Community (EEC), as the European Union was then known, comprised Germany, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and Italy, the original six founding members and signatories of the Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957.
anticipating another anodyne meeting like all the previous ones
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.
