The World Bank was not (and despite its name) the central bank of the world. At the time of the Bretton Woods agreements, the World Bank was created to lend to European countries devastated by the Second World War. The World Bank`s focus has shifted to lending to economic development projects in emerging economies. From 1947 to 1958, the United States deliberately encouraged an outflow of dollars, and by 1950 the United States had a balance of payments deficit with the intention of providing liquidity to the international economy. Dollars have flowed through various U.S. aid programs: the Truman Doctrine, aid to pro-Americans. The Greek and Turkish regimes that were fighting to suppress the communist revolution helped various pro-Americans. The third world regimes and especially the Marshall Plan. From 1948 to 1954, the United States provided $17 billion in subsidies to 16 Western European countries.

Imbalances in international trade were theoretically automatically corrected by the gold standard. A deficit country would have exhausted its gold reserves and would therefore have to reduce its money supply. The resulting drop in demand would reduce imports and lower prices would boost exports; That would offset the deficit. Any country suffering from inflation would lose gold and thus reduce the amount of money available to spend. The agreement also facilitated the creation of extremely important structures in the financial world: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), now known as the World Bank. A devastated Britain had little choice. Two world wars had destroyed the country`s main industries, which paid to import half of the country`s food and almost all its raw materials except coal. The British had no choice but to ask for help.

It was only when the United States signed an agreement on December 6, 1945, to provide Britain with $4.4 billion in aid, that the British Parliament ratified the Bretton Woods Accords (which took place later in December 1945). [24] While countries can no longer link all their currency conversion needs to the US dollar or peg that dollar to a fixed amount of gold, the legacy of Bretton Woods continues in the form of the IMF and the World Bank. The IMF still exists as a holder of reserve currencies, and the World Bank remains a lender to developing and growing countries after ending its role in financing the post-war reconstruction of Europe. Post-war world capitalism suffered from a huge shortage of dollars. The U.S. ran huge trade surpluses, and U.S. reserves were huge and growing. This river had to be reversed. Although all nations wanted to buy the United States. Exports, dollars had to leave the United States and become available for international use so they could do so. In other words, the US should reverse the imbalances in global prosperity by posting a trade deficit financed by an outflow of US reserves to other countries (a US budget deficit).

The United States could suffer from a financial deficit by importing, building factories or donating to foreign countries. Remember that speculative investments were prevented by the Bretton Woods agreements. Importing from other countries was not attractive in the 1950s, as American technology was up to date at the time. Multinationals and U.S. global aid have flourished. [29] The experience of the First World War was still fresh in the minds of public servants. Bretton Woods planners hoped to avoid a repeat of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, which had created enough economic and political tensions to lead to World War II. After the First World War, Britain owed the United States considerable sums that Britain could not repay because it had used the funds to support allies such as France during the war; the Allies could not repay Britain, so Britain could not repay the United States. The solution at Versailles for the French, British and Americans finally seemed to be to charge Germany for the debt. If the demands on Germany were unrealistic, then it was unrealistic for France to repay Britain and for Britain to repay the United States. [3] Thus, many of the “assets” on the balance sheets of international banks were in fact bad loans, culminating in the banking crisis of 1931. The relentless insistence of creditor countries on the repayment of war debts and Allied reparations, combined with a tendency towards isolationism, led to a collapse of the international financial system and a global economic depression.

[4] The so-called “beggar your neighbor” policy that emerged in the wake of the ongoing crisis has seen some trading nations devalue their currencies in order to increase their competitiveness (i.e. . . .