Les accords de Bretton Woods

Jul 8, 2014 Harold James and Domenico Lombardi

PRINCETON – La proximité du 70ème anniversaire de la Conférence de Bretton Woods qui a créé la Banque mondiale et le Fonds Monétaire International, ainsi que certains anniversaires historiques comme celui du débarquement allié en Normandie, soulignent la grandeur des ambitions de ses organisateurs. En effet, au milieu d'un tumulte considérable, la conférence a tenu à créer un cadre monétaire international stable qui puisse servir de pierre angulaire à un ordre mondial pacifique. Et cela a réussi, au moins pendant un certain temps.

Bretton Woods conserve encore aujourd'hui un fort pouvoir de fascination, avec au moins trois livres récents sur le sujet qui ont obtenu un succès commercial considérable. Qu'est-ce qui rend si fascinant un événement dans lequel un groupe d'hommes ne parle pour l'essentiel que d'argent ?

Il y a bien sûr quelques anecdotes piquantes, comme la danse de la femme de John Maynard Keynes, une ballerine russe, qui a gardé éveillé le secrétaire américain au Trésor. Et l'accusation d'espionnage pour le compte de l'Union soviétique contre Harry Dexter White, le principal négociateur américain. Mais le véritable drame de la conférence réside dans l'évolution systématique d'une structure institutionnelle qui sous-tend la stabilité et la prospérité d'au moins trois décennies.

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Harold James

Writing for PS since 2001
198 Commentaries

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of The Euro and The Battle of Ideas, and the author of The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm, Making the European Monetary Union, and The War of Words.

Domenico Lombardi

Writing for PS since 2013
7 Commentaries

Domenico Lombardi, a former executive board member at the IMF and the World Bank, is a strategic advisor and former bank CEO.

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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jul 11, 2014

Keynes was a great philosopher and economist. He saw and thought beyond his own natinality. He understood the importance of international cooperation. But, as I understand, he saw the danger of going too far beyond national and political needs. The grand schemes that far extend over them can be dangerous. What we call international rules are very often the rules that serve a particular country's interests and that, special economic interrets of a particular group of that country.

The sanguine expectation that Prof. Lombardi seems to place on China for international coordination and cooperation exhibits, I feel. a too naive and facile idea, a characteristic which comes from liberalism of people of the West; it can be a defect if indiscriminately applied or if thought to be indiscriminately aspired to everywhere in the world.

China is historically a society that could be put together, the danger of disintegration staved off, only with an enourmously despotic, authoritarian political power. The ruling elites have possessed and excercised an enormously gigantic and cold-blooded power. Finance, namely controlling the renminbi, is the most effective and indispensable method for social management together with propaganda in school and heavily armed police for social order. "Open global economy" is a good meal for everyone but it is poison for Chinese leaders.
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Simon Winchester Jul 11, 2014

Simon Winchester, University of New England, Australia.
An interesting take on China, worth consideration, though I must take a different position.
The call for a freely traded RMB might better be seen as a political move by the Western neoliberal economies to reduce China's growing economic, and, by inference, regional political power. An open Chinese economy, and indeed challenge to the power of its elites, as facilitated by a freely traded currency is not in China's (or elites) short or medium term interests. The membership of WTO removed many of China's internal mechanisms to protect its development model. Its currency manipulation is all that it has left to protect this model.
I believe we must look at the core rationale behind calls for freer currency markets. For China, it just does not make sense - not yet. Though it must stimulate domestic demand for the next stage of its development, its coercive currency regime remains a key plank in its ongoing development. The neoliberal call for relaxation just does not hold water in a political analysis.
In closing, I pose a questions: would a freely traded RMB benefit the US people or the Wall Street-Treasury Complex? The answer to this may give rise to the central objectives of Western interest in the RMB.
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Nathan W Jul 10, 2014

Well it would be silly to create a crisis in hopes that it will stimulate the solution.

But perhaps fear of a declining role (on the part of the US) and an interest in buying trust with regard to peaceful intentions (on the part of China) is sufficient to bring them together to iron out something in advance of the crisis which would force they immediate, but most likely highly suboptimal, solution.
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Trissia Wijaya Jul 10, 2014

"What enabled Bretton Woods" is very comprehensive one where Harold James considers security and political dimension along with financial and monetary issue. Frankly speaking about China, for nowsaday global economy, ren-minbi power could not be underestimated - exactly how depreciation or appreciation of renminbi affect world trade much.
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Harry Blutstein Jul 8, 2014

While the US and UK were like-minded in supporting a liberal economic order, there were also major differences between the two major negotiators - John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White - each reflecting the interests of their country.

The US used its dominant position to railroad many of the excellent suggestions made by Keynes, which had they been implemented, would have seen the world's economy in better shape than it is. Instead, the US secured what it saw as the privileges that came with being the world's only hegemon, by making the US dollar the world's reserve currency, with almost no obligations on how it should conduct itself. Starting in the 1960s, the US abused this privilege, running up unfunded deficits to pay for its Great Society welfare programs and the Vietnam War, which led to the Nixon Shock in which the US unilaterally abandoned the gold standard, which was the only brake on its pursuit of irresponsible economic policies.

The world might have been quite different had Keynes prevailed in his call for the creation of an international currency, which he called the Banco, a credible alternative to relying on the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. He also suggested an adjustment scheme, in which the IMF would not only support countries with temporary deficits, but also penalize countries that had built up significant surpluses, so that the world's economy would remain in balance. As the largest creditor country, the US vetoed that idea. He also wanted controls on speculative capital, and while the final agreement included some controls, they were watered down at the behest of large US banks.

Therefore, not only did Bretton Woods herald in the liberal economic order, but it also provided special privileges to the major hegemon at the time, often overriding the out-going hegemon. As such, it represented the changing of the guard, which in the first time in history was done peacefully. For Great Britain, this was simply a case of realpolitik. If there is any chance of a new Bretton Woods, it will require the current hegemon, which is still the US, to make way (and grant concessions to) the new economic superpowers like China and possibly India and Brazil. What is the chance of that happening peacefully?
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