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() "In the long run we are all dead".
Here is a summary of that eventful year when they created the IMF and other world organizations after the WWII in New Hampshire, please read on this is a quote from one article in foreign exchange:
The Bretton Woods Accord
The first major transformation, the Bretton Woods Accord, occurred toward the end of World War II. The United States, Great Britain and France met at the United Nations' Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to design a new economic order. This location in the U.S. was chosen because, at the time, was the only country unscathed by war. Most of the European countries were in shambles. Up until WWII, Great Britain and the British Pound had been the major currencies by which most currencies were compared.
This changed when the Nazi campaign against Britain included a major counterfeiting effort against its currency. In fact, WWII vaulted the US dollar from a has been currency after the stock market crash of 1929 to the benchmark by which most currencies were compared. The Bretton Woods Accord was established to create a stable environment by which global economies could re-establish themselves. The Bretton Woods Accord established the pegging of currencies and the International Monetary Fund ("IMF") in hopes of stabilizing the global economic situation.
Major Currencies were pegged to the US dollar. These currencies were allowed to fluctuate by one percent on either side of the set standard. When a currency's exchange rate would approach the limit on either side of this standard, the respective central bank would intervene, thus bringing the exchange rate back into the accepted range. In addition to this, the US dollar was pegged to gold at a price of $35 per ounce. Pegging the dollar to gold and the pegging of the other currencies to the dollar brought stability to the world Forex situation.
The Bretton Woods Conference rejected John Maynard Keynes suggestion for a new world reserve currency in favour of a system built on the US dollar. Other international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and GATT were created in the same period as the emerging victors of WW2 searched for a way to avoid the destabilising monetary crises which led to the war. The Bretton Woods agreement resulted in a system of fixed exchange rates that partly reinstated the gold standard, fixing the US dollar at USD35/oz and fixing the other main currencies to the dollar - and was intended to be permanent.
The Bretton Woods system came under increasing pressure as national economies moved in different directions during the sixties. A number of realignments kept the system alive for a long time, but eventually Bretton Woods collapsed in the early seventies following president Nixon's suspension of the gold convertibility in August 1971. The dollar was no longer suitable as the sole international currency at a time when it was under severe pressure from increasing US budget and trade deficits.
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