Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods
Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-04-18

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0801470617

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Eric Helleiner's new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods
Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-04-17

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 0801470609

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"Forgotten Foundations is classic interdisciplinary history, drawing on literatures from political science and economics as well as primary sources.... Helleiner has made an important contribution that will permanently re-frame how scholars conceptualize Bretton Woods."― Journal of Interdisciplinary History Eric Helleiner’s new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

States and the Reemergence of Global Finance
States and the Reemergence of Global Finance

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1501701975

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Most accounts explain the postwar globalization of financial markets as a product of unstoppable technological and market forces. Drawing on extensive historical research, Eric Helleiner provides the first comprehensive political history of the phenomenon, one that details and explains the central role played by states in permitting and encouraging financial globalization.Helleiner begins by highlighting the commitment of advanced industrial states to a restrictive international financial order at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference and during the early postwar years. He then explains the growing political support for the globalization of financial markets after the late 1950s by analyzing five sets of episodes: the creation of the Euromarket in the 1960s, the rejection in the early 1970s of proposals to reregulate global financial markets, four aborted initiatives in the late 1970s and early 1980s to implement effective controls on financial movements, the extensive liberalization of capital controls in the 1980s, and the containment of international financial crises at three critical junctures in the 1970s and 1980s.He shows that these developments resulted from various factors, including the unique hegemonic interests of the United States and Britain in finance, a competitive deregulation dynamic, ideological shifts, and the construction of a crisis-prevention regime among leading central bankers. In his conclusion Helleiner addresses the question of why states have increasingly embraced an open, liberal international financial order in an era of considerable trade protectionism.

The Battle of Bretton Woods
The Battle of Bretton Woods

Author: Benn Steil

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-02-24

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0691149097

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Recounts the events of the Bretton Woods accords, presents portaits of the two men at the center of the drama, and reveals Harry White's admiration for Soviet economic planning and communications with intelligence officers.

The Neomercantilists
The Neomercantilists

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1501760130

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At a time when critiques of free trade policies are gaining currency, The Neomercantilists helps make sense of the protectionist turn, providing the first intellectual history of the genealogy of neomercantilism. Eric Helleiner identifies many pioneers of this ideology between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries who backed strategic protectionism and other forms of government economic activism to promote state wealth and power. They included not just the famous Friedrich List, but also numerous lesser-known thinkers, many of whom came from outside of the West. Helleiner's novel emphasis on neomercantilism's diverse origins challenges traditional Western-centric understandings of its history. It illuminates neglected local intellectual traditions and international flows of ideas that gave rise to distinctive varieties of the ideology around the globe, including in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. This rich history left enduring intellectual legacies, including in the two dominant powers of the contemporary world economy: China and the United States. The result is an exceptional study of a set of profoundly influential economic ideas. While rooted in the past, it sheds light on the present moment. The Neomercantilists shows how we might construct more global approaches to the study of international political economy and intellectual history, devoting attention to thinkers from across the world, and to the cross-border circulation of thought.

Bretton Woods Institutions & Neoliberalism
Bretton Woods Institutions & Neoliberalism

Author: Mark J Wolff

Publisher: Pacem in Terris Press

Published: 2018-07-10

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9780999608852

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In July 1944, delegates from forty-four allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The meeting resulted in the creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ("IBRD"), and the International Monetary Fund ("IMF"). This book demonstrates that current Bretton Woods Institutions' ("BWI") policies must be fundamentally redesigned, since many are archaic, and others are counter-productive to integral sustainable development in the current global economy. Further, the book argues that the dominant nations in the BWI have forced their political agendas on the rest of the world, while hiding behind the veil of these multilateral global financial institutions. The book concludes that the BWI, due to their lending policies and governing structures, have restrained authentic global development. It also proposes alternative strategies for authentic sustainable development through other multilateral global institutions. PROFESSOR MARK J. WOLFF is Professor of Law at Saint Thomas University School of Law in Miami, Florida. He also serves as Legal Counsel and Board Member, Malta Projects of Southeastern Florida, Inc., an affiliate of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. In addition, he is General Counsel and member of the Board of Directors of Pax Romana-USA, and of the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Institute at St. Thomas University, as well as a Faculty Advisor for the Center for Ethics at St. Thomas University. He formerly served as an International Vice President of Pax Romana / International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, and as Main Representative of Pax Romana at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He also founded and is Director of the St. Thomas University School of Law's United Nations Externship Program, at United Nations Headquarter in New York City. Currently, he as an Adviser to the Permanent Mission of the Order of Malta to the United Nations Headquarters in New York. In the past, he has served as a member and head of delegations on behalf of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta at United Nations World Conferences and International Consultative Conferences, and he has addressed the plenary sessions of these Conferences and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The Great Wall of Money
The Great Wall of Money

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-09-08

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0801454662

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As an economic superpower, China has become an increasingly important player in the international monetary system. Its foreign exchange reserves are the largest in the world and its exchange rate policy has become a major subject of international economic diplomacy. The internationalization of the renminbi (RMB) raises critical questions in international policy circles: What kinds of power is China acquiring in international monetary relations? What are the priorities of the Chinese government? What explains its preferences? In The Great Wall of Money, a distinguished group of contributors addresses these questions from distinct perspectives, revealing the extent to which China’s choices, and global monetary affairs, will be shaped by internal political factors and affect world politics. The RMB is a likely competitor for the dollar in the next couple of decades; its emergence as an important international currency would have substantial effects on the balance of power between the United States and China. By illuminating the politics of China’s international monetary relations, this book provides a timely account of the global economy, the role of the renminbi in international relations, and the trajectory of China’s continuing ascendency in the coming decades.

Do Old Habits Die Hard? Central Banks and the Bretton Woods Gold Puzzle
Do Old Habits Die Hard? Central Banks and the Bretton Woods Gold Puzzle

Author: Eric Monnet

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-07-24

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 1498326773

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Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944–1971) when only the US had to? We argue that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to back currency in circulation with gold reserves, following rules of the pre-WWII gold standard. The longer an institution spent in the gold standard (and the older the policymakers), the stronger the correlation between gold reserves and currency. Since dollars and gold were not perfect substitutes, the Bretton Woods system never worked as expected. Even after radical institutional change, history still shapes the decisions of policymakers.

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present
The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present

Author: David C. Engerman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-03-03

Total Pages: 903

ISBN-13: 1108317855

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The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

Revolution in Development
Revolution in Development

Author: Christy Thornton

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0520297164

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Revolution in Development uncovers the surprising influence of postrevolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Christy Thornton meticulously traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions. By decentering the United States and Europe in the history of global economic governance, Revolution in Development shows how Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for more than five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, the book demonstrates, Mexican officials shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects but also the contours of the project of international development itself.