The Summit: Bretton Woods, 1944—J.M. Keynes and the Reshaping of the Global Economy

The celebrated agreement that mapped the postwar world’s system of stable, convertible exchange rates and gave birth to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank was a dramatic, dicey affair, according to this lively history. The Bretton Woods Conference was held in New Hampshire at the end of WWII, conceived as an opportunity for the Allies to work together to hash out a new economic order. Sky News economics editor Conway frames the story as a showdown between the brilliant, abrasive British economist John Maynard Keynes, with his vision of an international currency and automatic mechanisms to alleviate international trade imbalances, and the Machiavellian U.S. Treasury official Harry Dexter White, whose more conservative plan won out—pointing to the ascendency of the U.S. over Great Britain as a global superpower toward the end of WWII. The two key players are surrounded by a menagerie of colorful characters, from Keynes’s wife Lydia, who scandalized conference goers by skinny dipping in the hotel’s pond, to the blustery, hard-drinking Soviet contingent (to whom White was suspected of passing secrets). Conway’s entertaining narrative gives a lucid, engaging rundown of underlying economic issues, although his case for the indispensability of the Bretton Woods system, which collapsed in the 1970s, is less than compelling. More illuminating is his portrayal of grand economic institutions as flawed, haphazard structures improvised by confused and exhausted bureaucrats. Photos. (Feb.)