O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador Center for Financial Stability. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Center for Financial Stability. Mostrar todas as postagens

sábado, 2 de julho de 2022

The Bretton Woods Transcripts - by Kurt Schuler and Andrew Rosenberg, eds. (Center for Financial Stability)

 The Bretton Woods Transcripts 

edited by Kurt Schuler and Andrew Rosenberg 

published by Center for Financial Stability, 

indicated by Arthur Garbayo and Silvio Figer (2012).

Bretton Woods Transcripts:

“The Bretton Woods Transcripts, edited by Center for Financial Stability (CFS) Senior Fellow Kurt Schuler and CFS Research Associate Andrew Rosenberg, offer the reader a front row seat at the conference that has shaped the international monetary system for nearly 70 years. The Bretton Woods Transcripts were never intended for publication, and give an inside perspective of what participants at this major international gathering said behind closed doors.

The Transcripts reveal an untold story from World War II, as well as the vision of luminaries such as John Maynard Keynes, future presidents, prime ministers, and other world leaders. Despite a war still waging in 1944, delegates from 44 nations worked tirelessly in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to construct a financial system that would promote growth, minimize global imbalances, and foster stability…”

https://centerforfinancialstability.org/brettonwoods.php

Financial Timeline

“The timeline’s horizontal bands segregate notable developments to help you explore linkages between financial markets, private sector institutions, and policy responses. See how policy responded to events, and then how markets and institutions reacted to the policy changes. Click on the events for more information. See more in the full screen version…”

Historical Financial Statistics

https://centerforfinancialstability.org/hfs.php

“Welcome to Historical Financial Statistics (HFS), a free, noncommercial data set on exchange rates, central bank and commercial bank balance sheets, interest rates, money supply, inflation, international trade, government finance, national accounts, and more. Our focus is data from roughly 1500 to 1950, although we have earlier and later data. Historical Financial Statistics currently contains about 150,000 annual data points and more than 2 million higher-frequency data points. It is intended to complement a number of long-established databases whose coverage begins in the mid 20th century.

The editor of Historical Financial Statistics is Kurt Schuler, Senior Fellow in Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability (CFS). The data in Historical Financial Statistics are available thanks to the generosity of many researchers. For a full list, see the acknowledgments…”

Historical Financial Statistics

Welcome to Historical Financial Statistics (HFS), a free, noncommercial data set on exchange rates, central bank and commercial bank balance sheets, interest rates, money supply, inflation, international trade, government finance, national accounts, and more. Our focus is data from roughly 1500 to 1950, although we have earlier and later data. Historical Financial Statistics currently contains about 150,000 annual data points and more than 2 million higher-frequency data points. It is intended to complement a number of long-established databases whose coverage begins in the mid 20th century. 

The editor of Historical Financial Statistics is Kurt Schuler, Senior Fellow in Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability (CFS). The data in Historical Financial Statistics are available thanks to the generosity of many researchers. For a full list, see the acknowledgments.

Data

Data are in Excel spreadsheets, often in Excel binary (.xlsb) format, which is only compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions. Click on the links below to download the spreadsheet workbooks. On some computers, files may download to your default download folder. Several are large and may download slowly. Data are often not repeated across tables, so if you are looking for an end of year exchange rate, for instance, start with the annual general table, and if you do not find it there, look at the monthly general table and the monthly and daily indicator tables focusing on exchange rates.

(1) General tables, showing many categories of data (one big workbook)

  • Annual data starting before 1800 (sparse data, hence a separate spreadsheet); annual data since 1800; monthly data (includes semiannual and quarterly data) (Uploaded Nov 20, 15).

(2) Indicator tables, focusing on a single category of data

  • Exchange rates
  • Interest rates:  Daily policy interest rates of central banks; daily market interest rates; annual bond yields; monthly bond yields from the interwar period (Uploaded Mar 02, 15).
  • Exchange controls (Uploaded Mar 02, 15).

(3) Additional data that do not fit into the standard templates above

Documentation

The “Data Notes” PDF file, more than 250 pages long, provides detailed background information and references for the data in Historical Financial Statistics. It also contains copyright information, a legal notice, suggestions on how to cite us, and the conditions that apply to reproducing data. (In particular, restrictions exist on reproducing data for any commercial use and for noncommercial database use, and we assume no liability for the data.) Certain other useful files are also listed below. All are in Excel or PDF.

Contact Information

Kurt Schuler
Senior Fellow in Financial History at the CFS
kschuler@the-cfs.org

Acknowledgments

The editor of Historical Financial Statistics is Kurt Schuler, Senior Fellow in Financial History at the CFS. The data in Historical Financial Statistics are available thanks to the generosity of many researchers. For a full list, see the acknowledgments. For the latest update, we thank in particular the following researchers:

Scholars in the South-East European Monetary History Network for data on the countries of that region: Neraida Hoxhaj, Arta Pisha, and Besa Vorpsi (Bank of Albania); Clemens Jobst and Thomas Scheiber (Oesterreichische Nationalbank); Kalina Dimitrova (Bulgarian National Bank); Martin Ivanov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute for History); Sophia Lazaretou (Bank of Greece); Adriana Aloman. Elisabeta Blejan, Brînduşa Graţiela Costache, and George Virgil Stoenescu (National Bank of Romania); Ljiljana Đurđević, Branko Hinić, and Milan Šojić (National Bank of Serbia); Yüksel Görmez (Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey); Sevket Pamuk (Bogaziçi University and London School of Economics); Ali Coşkun Tunçer (University College London); Serkan Yiğit (Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey)

Sally Hills (Bank of England), Ryland Thomas (Bank of England), and Nicholas Dimsdale (Oxford University) for three centuries of data on the British economy.

Nicholas Krus (formerly Johns Hopkins University, now Warner Music) for balance sheet data from many currency boards around the world from the mid 1800s to the present.

Ewout Frankema (Wageningen University) for government finance data for many British colonies

Frankema and Marlous Van Waijenburg (Northwestern University) for wage data for a number of African countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Links of Interest

Sites with extensive data before the mid 20th century:

Sites whose data are predominantly or entirely since the mid 20th century:

New scholarship on economic history, including financial history:

More specialized data sets

https://bit.ly/3AiQMrj

quarta-feira, 29 de janeiro de 2020

Interview with economist John Williamson, Washington Consensus (Center for Financial Stability)


Interview with  economist John Williamson, Washington Consensus

CFS is delighted to present an interview with the eminent international economist John Williamson, reviewing his more than five decades of work in the field.

Williamson is best known for coining the term "Washington Consensus" in 1989 as a summary of the policy reforms and structural adjustment measures that the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury advocated for emerging market economies. The term quickly gained resonance and continues to be widely used today. Over time, he modified his views on what the Washington Consensus should be (see the appendix to the interview).

He also worked for much of his career on "intermediate" exchange rates between the extremes of fixed and floating. The late Rüdiger Dornbusch of MIT summarized Williamson’s proposals as "BBC" – band, basket and crawl. In support of them, Williamson devised the influential concept of the "fundamental equilibrium exchange rate" (FEER).

In 2012 Williamson retired from the Peterson Institute of International Economics, where he had been a senior fellow for more than 20 years. His previous appointments included professorships in his native England, the United States, and Brazil; an advisory post at the British Treasury; and staff or management positions at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and United Nations.

CFS senior fellow Kurt Schuler and research associate Robert Yee interviewed Williamson, assisted by Williamson’s daughter Theresa.


Best regards,
Larry

--
Lawrence Goodman
President
Center for Financial Stability
1120 Avenue of the Americas, 4th floor
New York, NY  10036

terça-feira, 26 de novembro de 2019

A teoria monetária moderna não é nem moderna, nem monetária - Lawrence Goodman

E eu diria que é uma teoria de baixíssima qualidade. Mas isso não impede que tresloucados econômicos emprestem adesão a esse novo instrumento de gastança ilimitada por políticos e profissionais pouco comprometidos com a governança responsável.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

From: Lawrence Goodman, President, Center for Financial Stability

I had the pleasure of presenting "Monetary Policy Paradigm Shifts" as well as delivering conference summary remarks at a discussion hosted by the Shanghai Development Research Foundation (SDRF).  The conference hosts beautifully structured the inquiry regarding monetary policy across three areas.  Corresponding conclusions follow:

- "Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)" is neither modern nor monetary.  It is theory.  CFS has avoided discussing this topic; however, threads seem to be drifting into mainstream thinking.  MMT has already been tried and performed poorly.  Our assessment rests on studies and empirical evidence including Gail Makinen's "Studies in Hyperinflation & Stabilization" published by CFS in 2014.  

- "Fundamental changes in theory and policy today" are a function of three policy miscalculations since 2002.  Monetary mistakes in the past have paved the way for more experiments and the surfacing of ideas such as MMT.

- "The effect on global markets and economies" is to skew incentives for savers and investors, distort market signals, and limit growth.

Although tricky, a slow and careful restoration of normalcy is essential.  It is today's critical constrained maximization problem.

View the remarks at www.centerforfinancialstability.org/research/ShanghaiDRF_111819.pdf

Best regards,
Larry
-- 
Lawrence Goodman
President
Center for Financial Stability
1120 Avenue of the Americas, 4th floor
New York, NY  10036
1 212 626 2660

www.CenterforFinancialStability.org

segunda-feira, 13 de junho de 2016

Bretton Woods, 70 anos atras, 70 anos a frente - Center for Financial Stability









Honoring the 70th anniversary of the original conference, Bretton Woods 2014: The Founders and the Future was held at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire from Sept. 3rd to Sept. 4th. The hotel was exclusively available for the conference, just as it was in 1944. The event gathered prominent leaders from government, business, and academia in a working-group environment to focus on the future of finance and the international monetary system.
 http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/bw2014.php
Topics included prospects for the world’s foreign exchange system; future of finance and financial institutions; technology and the future of the international financial system; how to better anticipate and manage future crises; the future of sovereign debt restructuring; the future role of the IMF and World Bank; and history and leadership at Bretton Woods in 1944.

Bretton Woods 2014 gathered prominent leaders from government, business, and academia in a working-group environment to focus on the future of finance and the international monetary system. Please see more about the conference to see other remarks, presentations, and photos from the conference.
Future Prospects for the World‘s Foreign Exchange Rate System: Political Design vs. Evolution, Otmar Issing
Read remarks |  Read slides
Nice-Squared - Near an Internationally Cooperative Equilibrium, John B. Taylor  Read remarks |  See video
A Few Thoughts on the Current International Monetary System, Liu Mingkang  Read paper
Bretton Woods Reconsidered:The Dollar Standard and the Role of China, Ronald McKinnon   Read paper | Read slides
Marriner Eccles: Father of the Modern Federal Reserve, Spencer F. Eccles  Read remarks
Critical Issues for the Bretton Woods Institutions, William R. Rhodes  Read remarks
The 1944 Keynes Plan: An Idea Whose Time Has Now Returned?, Charles Goodhart  Read remarks
Summary and Next Steps, Randal K. Quarles  Read remarks
Thoughts on World War II in July 1944, Carole Brookins  Read remarks
What Have We Learned from Recent Research on Bretton Woods? Eric Helleiner, Eric Rauchway, and Kurt Schuler  Read paper

quinta-feira, 9 de abril de 2015

William Rhodes on Greece Debt and Bretton Woods institutions - CFS

Recebo, do Center for Financial Stability -- e acho esse nome totalmente contraditório, um conundrum -- seu boletim com um artigo publicado nesta quinta-feira naquele hiper-super jornal capitalista reacionário, dos especuladores de Wall Street, o próprio, cujo autor é o "bruxo" do Comitê Assessor de bancos que negociou, durante todos os anos 1980 a dívida brasileira e de diversos outros países latino-americanos, William Rhodes, Bill para os íntimos.
Ele também presidiu o seminário sobre Bretton Woods, realizado em setembro do ano passado no New Hampshire, lá mesmo em BW, e ao qual deixei de ir porque estava atravessando pela segunda vez os EUA.
Os muito anti-imperialistas não precisam ler, mas os interessados em aprender alguma coisa com um banqueiro imperialista, e que não se sente envergonhado de sê-lo, vão tirar proveiro das matérias.
Tem alguma lição para o Brasil desse artigo sobre a Grécia?
Bem, não pelo lado da dívida, pelo menos ainda não.
Mas sim pelo lado do câmbio.
Quando os agentes percebem que a situação vai se deteriorar, e que haverá desvalorização cambial, ocorre uma rápida fuga de capitais, não de capitalistas estrangeiros fugindo de país, mas de nacionais simplesmente se precavendo e especulando um pouco: compra-se dólar, pois quando a desvalorização ocorrer (como aliás já ocorreu), de 10, 20 ou 30%, depois se traz o dinheiro de volta com um bom lucro. Pois é...
O Larry que assina é Lawrence Goodman, president do CFS.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

This morning, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed "Greece's Achilles' Heel" by William R. Rhodes.  Bill is the President and CEO of William R. Rhodes Global Advisors, LLC; Professor-at-Large at Brown University; and former Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc.  CFS was honored to have Bill serve as a member of the Honorary Committee at Bretton Woods 2014.

"Greece's Achilles' Heel" is excellent (see http://on.wsj.com/1HUxBjp).  It struck a chord on two levels.

1) The approach is clear and represents the best path for Greece.  Bill notes:

- "It has yet to start negotiating seriously about a long-term solution to its debt crisis. The government needs to understand that creditors have long memories and want assurances that it will live up to the terms of whatever deal is struck."

- "Past crises have shown that there is never a white knight able to ride to the rescue - despite rumors that the Greeks may turn to Moscow and Beijing for aid."

- "Sovereign-debt deals have the best chance of succeeding if they are not seen as being imposed by the creditors, but rather owned and authored by the debtor country's government."

In a paper "Solving the Greek Crisis," CFS outlined the math supporting a similar strategy in 2011.  Although time has elapsed, the basic approach remains valid (See "Solving the Greek Crisis: http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/research/Greece_062411.pdf).

2)  On a personal note, I traveled with a fellow banker to Nicaragua in the late 1980s to help structure a buyback. Nothing happened.  In the aftermath, the country remained stagnant through 1995 when a buyback was finally orchestrated and the country began to grow again. Now is the time for action in Greece.

Lastly, at Bretton Woods, Bill offered an Honorary Committee Address called "Critical Issues for the Bretton Woods Institutions" - see http://www.centerforfinancialstability.org/bw2014/bw_rhodes.pdf. Many of these issues and recommendations are essential reading in advance of the upcoming IMF / World Bank meetings.

Best regards,
Larry
President
Center for Financial Stability, Inc.
1120 Avenue of the Americas, 4th floor
New York, NY 10036

www.CenterforFinancialStability.org
The Center for Financial Stability is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent think tank dedicated to financial markets for the benefit of investors, officials, and the public.

segunda-feira, 3 de novembro de 2014

Bretton Woods revisited, 70 years later: proceedings of the conference

Eu até recebi o convite para ir, mas no mesmo momento estava atravessando por uma segunda vez os Estados Unidos, e já tinha estado no New Hampshire duas vezes, para ver os locais da conferência.
Aqui estão as transcrições do evento.
Permito-me informar que preparei um artigo: “O FMI e o Brasil:  encontros e desencontros em 70 anos de história” (Hartford, 30 julho 2014, 24 p.) que traça um itinerário histórico do FMI, desde Bretton Woods, e segue os acordos feitos pelo Brasil, com ênfase nas diferentes fases das políticas econômicas. Foi encaminhado para número especial da revista FGV-Direito, sob o título de “O Brasil e o FMI desde Bretton Woods: 70 anos de História”. 
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The Center for Financial Stability (CFS) is grateful to many speakers and delegates for the success of the working conference
"Bretton Woods 2014: The Founders and the Future."

Delegates actively focused on the future of finance and the international monetary system to contemplate policies to foster global financial stability, growth, and cooperation.  We also honored and rested on the vision and leadership demonstrated 70 years ago at the historic Mount Washington Hotel.  Honorary Committee member Randy Quarles captured the spirit of the discussions by invoking an old Greek proverb:

"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

For links to speeches, papers, videos, and images from Bretton Woods 2014, please visit
http://centerforfinancialstability.org/bw2014.php

Select remarks and speeches include:

Welcome Message
Jacques de Larosiére - Managing Director of the IMF (1978 - 1987)

Future Prospects for the World's Foreign Exchange System
Otmar Issing - Member of the Executive Board of the ECB (1998 - 2006)

Nice-Squared (Near an Internationally Cooperative Equilibrium)
John B. Taylor - Professor of Economics at Stanford University

A Few Thoughts on the Current International Monetary System
Liu Mingkang - Member, 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Bretton Woods Reconsidered: The Dollar Standard and the Role of China
Ronald I. McKinnon (***) - Professor of International Economics at Stanford University

Marriner Eccles: Father of the Modern Federal Reserve
Spencer F. Eccles - Chairman Emeritus, Wells Fargo Intermountain Banking Region

Critical Issues for the Bretton Woods Institutions
William R. Rhodes - President and CEO of William R. Rhodes Global Advisors

Ideas for Today from the British Delegation of 1944
Charles Goodhart - Member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (1997 - 2000)

Mexico’s Role at Bretton Woods: An Assessment 70 Years Later
Francisco Suárez Dávila - Ambassador of Mexico to Canada

In Light of Recent Experiences: Is There a Future for International Cooperation?
Ernesto Zedillo - President of Mexico (1994 - 2000)

What Have We Learned about Bretton Woods from Recent Research?
Eric Helleiner - Author of "Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods"
Eric Rauchway - Author of "The Money-Makers: The Invention of Prosperity"
Kurt Schuler - Finder and editor of "The Bretton Woods Transcripts"

Thoughts on World War II in July 1944
Carole Brookins - U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank Group (2001 - 2005)

Summary and Next Steps
Randal K. Quarles - Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Treasury (2005 - 2006)

We are grateful to the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, BNY Mellon, the Citrone Foundation, and the Y.A. Istel Foundation in honor of André Istel for their vision and support of Bretton Woods 2014.

Sincerely yours,
Lawrence Goodman

(***) We are saddened by the loss of Professor Ron McKinnon, who enthusiastically shared his intelligence and humor with colleagues in New Hampshire earlier in the fall.

--
Lawrence Goodman
President
Center for Financial Stability, Inc.
1120 Avenue of the Americas, 4th floor
New York, NY 10036

www.CenterforFinancialStability.org
The Center for Financial Stability is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent think tank dedicated to financial markets for the benefit of investors, officials, and the public.

terça-feira, 15 de julho de 2014

Bretton Woods in book reviews, by Kurt Schuler

Da série de postagens, mas esta não tem a ver com o Brasil, e sim com livros que foram publicados e aqui resenhados por Kurt Schuler.
Estive em Bretton Woods recentemente, onde adquiri este livro:
Benn Steil: The Battle of Bretton Woods (Keynes vs White)
ainda vou ler...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

About Kurt Schuler

Kurt Schuler, co-editor of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, is Senior Fellow of Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability and an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the United States Department of the Treasury.

Review of Two New Books on Bretton Woods

(The following review, for the economic history site EH.net, is reprinted with their permission, and the copyright provisions specified there apply.)
Ed Conway, The Summit: The Biggest Battle of the Second World War, Fought Behind Closed Doors. London: Little, Brown, 2014. xxvi + 454 pp. £25 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-4055-2930-3.
and
Eric Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. xii + 304 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-8014-5275-8.
Two books have appeared just in time for the seventieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference. Edmund Conway’s The Summit is a popular account of the conference by a financial journalist, while Eric Helleiner’s Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods is a political scientist’s examination of a little explored angle of the conference: the role of what we now call emerging market countries.
Conway, economics editor of the British cable television channel Sky News, set out to write an overview incorporating material that has come to light since Armand van Dormael’s 1978 book Bretton Woods: Birth of a Monetary System. (Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods [2013] is an interpretation of the conference according to a master theme rather than an overall account, as I will explain later.)[1] We now have additional reminiscences by delegates; declassified archival material such as the Venona files detailing Soviet espionage in the ranks of U.S. Treasury officials; and full transcripts of many committee meetings at the conference.
Conway writes in a lively style. (Example: “As far as [Keynes] was concerned, the [International Monetary] Fund should be regarded as a kind of economic health spa. There should be no stigma associated with going to it for help: all countries should be entitled — nay, encouraged — to do so at some point. For White, however, the Fund was Accident and Emergency — countries should only be wheeled in if close to complete economic collapse” p. 171.) In addition, he has done some original research that will ensure a niche for his book in the scholarly literature. For example, in the Russian archives he found a number of documents that illustrate Soviet perceptions of Bretton Woods. The Soviet Union was active and often obstreperous at the Bretton Woods conference. It signed the Bretton Woods agreements but later decided not to join the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), in part because it did not want to divulge the economic data required of IMF members.
Because the book is intended for readers who may know nothing of Bretton Woods, many of you reading this review can comfortably skip the early chapters, which provide background, and start with the British delegation’s ocean voyage to America. Conway vividly conveys the atmosphere both of the voyage and of the Atlantic City conference that preceded Bretton Woods and developed the drafts from which the Bretton Woods delegates worked.
At the heart of The Summit is of course the account of the Bretton Woods conference itself. (The title, by the way, is a triple reference to Bretton Woods as an important international gathering, a high point in economic diplomacy, and a location within sight of the highest peak in the northeastern United States.) Conway devotes a substantial chapter to each of the three weeks of the conference. He gives an overall idea of the course of negotiations and, again, of the atmosphere in which delegates worked, but omits minute details that are more appropriate to books aimed at narrower audiences.
The final chapters describe the later life of the Bretton Woods agreements, beginning with controversies on the way to their ratification in the United States and in Britain. In the United States some experts got worked up about the agreements, but as Conway relates, the public was apathetic; with World War II still raging, the subject was too abstruse to arouse passion. In Britain, the country’s largest newspaper fiercely criticized the agreements, but the enormous parliamentary majority of the new Labour Party government meant that it could pass into law anything it wanted.
Throughout the book Conway focuses on the personality traits of the players. Economists and political scientists often write as if impersonal interests dominate and personalities make little difference; journalists, diplomats, and historians know better. As a case in point, the turnover of lower-level officials after Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt as president quickly led to changes in actual or prospective policies, including abandonment of the Morgenthau Plan to reduce Germany to an economic backwater after the war and the idea of locating the IMF and World Bank in New York rather than Washington. Conway’s book will not be, and is not intended to be, the authoritative academic account of Bretton Woods, but it is a useful addition to previous accounts.
Eric Helleiner, a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo (Canada), calls into question the prominent line of thinking about Bretton Woods that it was an American, and to a lesser extent a British, production, with other countries having little impact. Benn Steil is in this vein, interpreting Bretton Woods as a nearly unvarnished exercise in power politics. Steil focuses on the animosity of many American officials toward Britain and the ways in which they tried to use Bretton Woods and the Lend-Lease negotiations to diminish British postwar influence. Steil shares the view Keynes privately expressed, which likened the delegates from most other countries at Bretton Woods, particularly those from the poorer countries — what  we would now call emerging markets — as denizens of a “monkey house,” raucous and useless.
Helleiner’s library and archival research incorporate sources previously absent from English-language scholarship on Bretton Woods. His writing lacks Conway’s journalistic panache but conveys clearly ideas that other social scientists would have clotted with needless jargon. Helleiner finds antecedents to Bretton Woods, incidents at the conference, and events afterwards to indicate greater importance for the emerging markets than has hitherto been acknowledged.
The opening chapters focus on American attitudes toward emerging markets, documenting how Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and his Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America changed the approach of the U.S. government toward international financial issues. U.S. officials became more sympathetic to the concerns of emerging market officials on matters of exchange rate choice, exchange controls, commodity price stabilization, industrial protectionism, and, to a lesser extent, debt default. The remaining chapters discuss Bretton Woods as viewed from the perspective of Latin American, Asian, and Eastern European governments, with a sidebar on how British official attitudes about economic development did or did not fit into the picture.
Helleiner’s implicit claim is that by the time of Bretton Woods, the ideology of the Roosevelt administration, and the experience of the 1930s, made the U.S. government more comfortable with “developmentalist” ideas (my term, not Helleiner’s) than at any time before and possibly since. Helleiner discusses the abortive Inter-American Bank as a dry run for the IMF and especially the World Bank. It was to have been a government-owned multilateral financial institution, with weighted voting, lending both to ease short-term balance of payments problems and to promote long-term economic development. The United States was to have provided the largest share of funds for it, but the U.S. Congress failed to approve the charter, so the project died. An echo of it exists in the Inter-American Development Bank, established in 1959.
Two other important examples of changing U.S. official attitudes toward Latin America were the U.S. government advisory monetary missions to Cuba in 1941-42 and Paraguay in 1943-44. They were much friendlier to developmentalist ideas than the semiofficial U.S. monetary doctor Edwin Kemmerer had been when he had advised many Latin American and other countries in the 1920s. Latin American governments responded favorably to what they saw as greater recognition by the United States of their sovereign dignity. The motives of the United States were not purely disinterested: it wanted to keep Latin America out of the Nazi orbit. U.S. officials were solicitous about involving their Latin American counterparts in their international plans from an early stage, choosing the January 1942 Rio de Janeiro Conference to announce their interest in planning for the postwar financial order.
In return, Latin American governments were generally supportive of the U.S. plans, though they proposed and received some changes to support their interests. At Bretton Woods, they and the other emerging markets secured agreement that the World Bank would focus equally on reconstruction and development, as opposed to its original stronger focus on reconstruction. With regard to the International Monetary Fund agreement, Latin American countries got a provision expected to benefit commodity exporters, instructing the Fund to take into consideration exceptional requirements of borrowing countries. The IMF agreement also was tolerant of the multiple exchange rates that existed in a number of Latin American countries at the time.
(Here I must mention a misconception that pops up in discussions of Latin American countries at Bretton Woods. They were the largest regional bloc, but their influence was less than their numbers. The conference proceeded mostly by consensus, avoiding formal votes on contested issues where possible, because a contested agreement rammed through by majority vote would have jeopardized the support of the United States, the major source of funds. The United States, in turn, could not simply dictate terms because the IMF and World Bank would have lacked legitimacy had they been viewed as little more than fronts for U.S. policies.)
East Asia was represented at Bretton Woods only by China and by the Philippines, the latter still an American colony but scheduled to become independent soon. Helleiner calls attention to Sun Yat-Sen’s book International Development of China, a pioneering effort in what later came to be called development economics. It had a strong influence on subsequent Chinese thinking about economic development and some influence abroad. Before Bretton Woods, China submitted its own plan for the IMF, alongside the British, American, Canadian, and French plans. It has been neglected by most historical accounts, including the IMF’s official history.[2] At Bretton Woods, China got a clause inserted into the World Bank agreement allowing that in special circumstances, the Bank could make loans not tied to specific projects, hence promoting overall development goals.
India’s delegation at Bretton Woods, a mixture of Britons and Indians, effectively represented India’s particular interests even though India was still a British colony. The overall attitude of British officials toward developmentalist ideas was lukewarm, a result in part of Britain’s fragile war finances and the knowledge that resources Britain could command through its empire would be greatly reduced if the colonies were to have more local control of their economic policies. Keynes was more developmentalist than the British consensus. He had, for instance, suggested as early as 1913 that India should have a state-owned central bank with a development focus, and he was critical of the idea, eventually adopted, to establish a currency board in Burma after it separated monetarily from India following World War II.[3]
Delegates from Eastern Europe were, naturally, keenly interested in the IBRD’s reconstruction role, but the Polish delegation appreciated the case for development lending given that Eastern Europe other than Czechoslovakia could be seen as a backward region.
In the final chapter, Helleiner traces the subsequent fate of developmentalist ideas at the IMF and IBRD. The Cold War had the effect that what came to be called the Third World was, as its name implied, low in international status. Today, though, with the Cold War past and emerging markets accounting for roughly half of world output, “echoes of the Bretton Woods development discussions have begun to be heard once again” (p. 276).
Notes:
1. Van Dormael is a retired businessman turned amateur historian, Conway is a journalist, Steil is an economist, and Eric Helleiner is a political scientist. Professional historians are notable by their absence from deep study of Bretton Woods, although Eric Rauchway, a professor at the University of California-Davis, has a forthcoming account.
2. J. Keith Horsefield, The International Monetary Fund 1945-1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, 3 volumes (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1969).
3. The countries whose monetary reforms Helleiner discusses — Paraguay, Cuba, Burma, Ethiopia — have not been known for long-term monetary stability under the central banks that all eventually established. Might they in fact have been better off with more rigid monetary authorities?
Kurt Schuler, an economist, is Senior Fellow in Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability in New York. He is the editor, with Andrew Rosenberg, of The Bretton Woods Transcripts (2012).

Who Was at Bretton Woods?

In a new CFS paper released on July 1st, Mark Bernkopf and I offer a nearly complete list of the people who attended the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as delegates, secretarial staff, or journalists. There were roughly 700 people listed among several documents in the conference proceedings published in 1948 and the unpublished telephone directories issued during the conference.
In addition to the people directly concerned with the work of the conference, there were a number of Boy Scouts who helped distribute documents and move microphones, plus military messengers and police. None are listed in any document we have seen, though. Additionally, there were of course the staff not only of the Mount Washington Hotel, where the conference was held, but of three other hotels nearby that accommodated overflow boarders. The Bretton Arms Inn, within walking distance of the Mount Washington Hotel, is still in existence, while the more remote Crawford House and Maplewood Hotel no longer exist.
Mark Bernkopf, my coauthor, established in the 1990s what may have been the first Web site on central banking generally as opposed to the sites of particular central banks. It has since been superseded by other sites to which it served as an example and a spur, especially the “Central bank hub” section of the Bank for International Settlements site. After I found Mark’s site and contacted him by e-mail to ask him a question about it, we found that we lived within walking distance, and struck up a lasting friendship. A stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he established the Web site contributed to Mark’s interest in both the practice and history of central banking.

Who Was at Bretton Woods?

In a new CFS paper, Mark Bernkopf and I offer a nearly complete list of the people who attended the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as delegates, secretarial staff, or journalists. There were roughly 700 people listed among several documents in the conference proceedings published in 1948 and the unpublished telephone directories issued during the conference.
In addition to the people directly concerned with the work of the conference, there were a number of Boy Scouts who helped distribute documents and move microphones, plus military messengers and police. None are listed in any document we have seen, though. Additionally, there were of course the staff not only of the Mount Washington Hotel, where the conference was held, but of three other hotels nearby that accommodated overflow boarders. The Bretton Arms Inn, within walking distance of the Mount Washington Hotel, is still in existence, while the more remote Crawford House and Maplewood Hotel no longer exist.
Mark Bernkopf, my coauthor, established in the 1990s what may have been the first Web site on central banking generally as opposed to the sites of particular central banks. It has since been superseded by other sites to which it served as an example and a spur, especially the “Central bank hub” section of the Bank for International Settlements site. After I found Mark’s site and contacted him by e-mail to ask him a question about it, we found that we lived within walking distance, and struck up a lasting friendship. A stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he established the Web site contributed to Mark’s interest in both the practice and history of central banking.