A New Look at International Monetary Reform

There have been three essays in international monetary reform during the past 40 years. The first was unique in that, at Bretton Woods in 1944, representatives of two nations dominated the planning of a world monetary system which was, in essence, to endure for twenty‐five years. The uniqueness of this lay in the clean start made possible by the vacuum left by the war — an opportunity certainly not to be repeated. The fact that the Bretton Woods system prevailed, with modification and adaptation, for almost as long as the international gold standard testifies to the fact that its planning was not ill done.