A Search for Solvency: Bretton Woods and the International Monetary System, 1941-1971

Business & Money

ECKES Jr., ALFRED E.

Economics

University of Texas Press

Diverted by the dramatic military and political events of July 1944, few Americans realized the significance of an international conference taking place at Bretton Woods, a mountain resort in New Hampshire, far from the battle zones. There United Nations experts were completing plans for a world monetary and financial system that they hoped would create a prosperous, efficient global economy and avert economic tensions that might lead to another world war. Until the dollar crisis of 1971, decisions made at Bretton Woods provided the institutions and rules for international finance. The conference ushered in an era of unprecedented expansion of world trade and prosperity. Based on extensive research in previously unavailable sources, A Search for Solvency relates intriguing and often complicated issues of economic analysis and diplomatic history. It offers a succinct and comprehensive survey of international monetary development from the collapse of the pre–World War I gold standard to the devaluation of the dollar in 1971. In effect, it explains the origins of late twentieth-century global inflation and currency problems. The author details how the ghost of the Great Depression, the failure of monetary reconstruction efforts after World War I, and the memory of the nineteenth-century gold standard guided efforts to construct the Bretton Woods system. This preoccupation with the past, as well as political constraints, produced a monetary system protected against past dangers—fluctuating currencies, controls, and deflation—but dangerously vulnerable to inflationary pressures. The weaknesses of Bretton Woods, a system geared to an era in which economic power was concentrated in the United States, became visible in the 1960s and painfully apparent by the mid-1970s.

In 1973–1974 soaring commodity prices and an oil embargo alerted Americans to the twin dangers of resource exhaustion and dependence on unreliable foreign materials suppliers. This period seemed to mark a watershed in history as the United States shifted from the era of relative resource abundance to relative materials scarcity.Alfred E. Eckes’s comprehensive study shows that resource depletion and supply dislocations are not concerns unique to the 1970s. Since 1914, the quest for secure and stable supplies of industrial materials has been an important underlying theme of international relations and American diplomacy.Although the United States has been blessed with a diversified materials base, it has pursued a minerals strategy designed to exploit low-cost, high-quality ores abroad. Eckes demonstrates how this policy has led to official protection for overseas private investments, involving a role for the Central Intelligence Agency.Some modern historians have neglected the importance of resources in shaping diplomacy and history. This book, based on a vast variety of unutilized archival collections and recently declassified government documents, helps to correct that imbalance. In the process it illuminates an important and still timely aspect of America’s global interests.

The United States and the Global Struggle for Minerals

History

Americas

Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler argue that the "American Century" of global leadership resulted from revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for free trade. The authors reveal how this formula helped the nation rise to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and win both world wars and the Cold War. America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued global market dominance in the following decade. But the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance raise questions as to whether the era of American-led globalization is sustainable.

Globalization and the American Century

Zeiler, Thomas W.

Cambridge University Press

A critical review of recent U.S. trade policies that have failed to enforce sufficient reciprocity and overall trade balance, with suggestions for policies that foster a more balanced and realistic pattern of world trade growth.

United States Trade Policy: History, Theory and the WTO

LOVETT, WILLIAM A.

BRINKMAN, RICHARD L.

International

Routledge

A critical review of US trade policies that have failed to enforce sufficient reciprocity and overall trade balance. The authors seek to explain the failures of each policy, with an emphasis on trade history, a synthesis of trade theory outlooks and chronic internal deficits.

U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the Wto

Lovett (Tulane Law School), Eckes (a former commissioner of the U.S. International Commission during the Reagan and Bush I administrations), and Brinkman (international economics, Portland State U.) evaluate the evolution of U.S. trade policy, focusing on the period from the establishment of the Gen

U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO

Lovett (Tulane Law School), Eckes (a former commissioner of the U.S. International Commission during the Reagan and Bush I administrations), and Brinkman (international economics, Portland State U.) evaluate the evolution of U.S. trade policy, focusing on the period from the establishment of the Gen

Written for high school or beginning undergraduate students, this four-volume reference valiantly attempts to provide a historical framework for the perhaps overly broad concept of world trade. Entry topics were selected on trade organizations, influential people, commodities, events that affected trade, trade routes, navigation, religion, communic

Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present: From Ancient Times to the Present

Manning, Patrick

Pomeranz, Kenneth

Topik, Steven

Bentley, Jerry H.

Northrup, Cynthia Clark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ECKES Jr., ALFRED E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by ECKES Jr., ALFRED E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ECKES Jr., ALFRED E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Search for Solvency: Bretton Woods and the International Monetary System, 1941-1971

A Search for Solvency: Bretton Woods and the International Monetary System, 1941-1971

The United States and the Global Struggle for Minerals

Globalization and the American Century

Globalization and the American Century

United States Trade Policy: History, Theory and the WTO

United States Trade Policy: History, Theory and the WTO

U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO

U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the Wto

Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present: From Ancient Times to the Present