The growth of the multinational corporation meant that billions of pounds worth of capital was flowing around the world within corporations. Toyota, General Electric, and Volkswagen couldn’t afford to keep their subsidiaries across the globe insulated from one another — money had to be moved, even if that meant undermining the monetary architecture of the international economy. Technological change also facilitated direct transfers of capital between different parts of the world. All this meant that, despite the continued existence of capital controls, capital mobility had increased substantially by the 1970s. The combination of the emergence of the Eurodollar markets and the rise of the multinational corporation were beginning to place serious strain on Bretton Woods.

But it was the US government — not the banks — that dealt the final blow to the system that it had helped to create. With the dollar as the reserve currency, the US had gained the “exorbitant privilege” of being able to produce dollars to finance its spending15. Because everyone needed dollars, the US could spend as much as it liked without the threat of hyper-inflation. The gold peg was supposed to rein in this behaviour: if investors started to think that there were more dollars in circulation than gold to back it up, they might turn up at Fort Knox demanding the weight of their dollars in gold. But this didn’t stop the Americans from printing billions of dollars to fund a wasteful and destructive war in Vietnam. Combined with dollars leaking out of the US via its growing current account deficit, the global economy was facing a dollar glut by the 1970s. Realising that there were far too many dollars in circulation to keep up the pretence, in 1971 Nixon announced that dollars would no longer be convertible to gold. Bretton Woods was finally over.

With the demise of Bretton Woods, capital was finally released from its cage. Many countries continued to maintain capital controls and strict financial regulation. But the glut of dollars that had emerged at the international level needed somewhere to go. Meanwhile, the capital that had been stored up within states like the UK under Bretton Woods was desperate to be released into the global economy. It pushed and strained against the continued existence of capital controls, finding ever more ingenious ways of getting around the system. Finance capital had returned with a vengeance, and it sought to remove all obstacles to its continued growth. But it would take a national crisis for the remnants of the post-war order finally to fall.