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The Bretton Woods Institutions Have Done More Harm Than Good

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Submitted By M4rel000
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Most of the countries tried to reestablish the gold standard after World War I, but it had been totally collapsed during the Great Depression in 1930s. Some economists said comply with the gold standard had prohibited monetary authorities from increasing the money supply rapidly enough to recover the economies. Therefore, the representatives of most of the world's leading nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to create a new international monetary system. The representatives had decided to link the world currencies to the dollar since the United States accounted for over half of the world's manufacturing capacity and held most of the world's gold during that time. At the final, they agreed should be convertible into gold at $35 per ounce.
What is Bretton Woods System? The Bretton Woods system is often refer to the international monetary regime that prevailed from the end of World War II until 1971. The origin of the name is from the site of the 1944 conference that had created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. According to the history, the Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern currency relations among sovereign states. In principle, the regime was designed to combine binding legal obligations with multilateral decision-making conducted through an international organization -- the IMF, endowed with limited supranational authority. In practice the initial scheme, as well as its subsequent development and ultimate demise, were directly dependent on the preferences and policies of its most powerful member -- the United States.
The International Monetary Fund was officially established on 27th December 1945, when the 29 nations who had participated in the conference of Bretton Woods signed the Articles of Agreement. It commenced its financial operations on 1st March 1947. The

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