The Rise and Fall of the Bretton Woods Systems and the Re-Emergence of Private Debt in Developing Economies

Abstract

This chapter argues that the Bretton Woods system was dysfunctional because it required private financial capital to be inactive and rested on one national currency, originating in the economy of the United States, needed to run external deficits to provide worldwide liquidity. Fixed exchange rates, although adjustable, failed to guarantee enough liquidity for international trade or financial stability. Long-term loans were insufficient to finance the economic growth and development of backward regions. Thus, the multilateral system failed, and beggar-thy-neighbour practices reappeared, along with an unregulated financial market (Eurodollar market), which planted the seeds that destabilized the international financial system at the beginning of the 1970s. This was the genesis of a new international financial order that internationalized and even globalized domestic economic structures, spreading financial and economic instability.