After the end of the war in Europe, the United States in the economy, military, diplomatic what new changes occurred

The Bretton Woods dynasty: the weak king of gold ascended to the throne, the dollar regency world

Americans from 1941 just entered the war, has begun to conceptualize the future of the dollar era, the United States of America's confidence in the achievement of victory in the war is unquestionable. Countless academic seminars, policy advice and congressional hearings gradually shaped the U.S. post-war financial strategic plan, which was the Bretton Woods system established in 1944.

The Bretton Woods system is, simply put: one center, two basic points.

A center, is the establishment of a gold for the weak master, and the dollar in charge of the real power of the world monetary center. The dollar is linked to gold, and national currencies are linked to the dollar, everyone *** with embracing the gold king of the world. Under this system, the U.S. dollar and gold *** with as countries to issue their own currency currency reserves, the dollar will be y implanted in the monetary credit of each country, as long as the world economy is developing, the need for the dollar will naturally increase, the U.S. dollar will be through the increase in the issuance of currency to harvest the fruits of the development of each country. This is but an upgraded version of the 1922 gold exchange standard, with the dollar crowding out the pound sterling, and the scope of application being extended to the entire globe. The problem of double credit creation has not been solved, and it will surely trigger another flood of liquidity and a greater currency crisis worldwide.

Since after World War II, the U.S. national strength has accounted for half of the world's economy, and the military power is even more proud of the world, the U.S. why not directly establish the dollar dynasty, why do you still need to invite the gold that has been abolished the throne to be a puppet emperor? Cao Cao has never dared to usurp the Han dynasty to stand on its own, not enough strength, not the ambition, but the time is not ripe, one is worried about the world's hearts and minds are not convinced, and the second is worried about the vassals competing for the title of emperor, the loss of the Han dynasty's orthodoxy of the appeal will increase the difficulty of unification of the country. The United States also has similar concerns, the universal legitimacy of gold is still y embraced by the people of all countries, not short-term can be extinguished. World War II was not yet over, and post-war reconstruction was all the more necessary to bring people together. The United States is a traditionally isolationist countries, the first time as the protagonist on the stage of world hegemony, there is a lack of leadership experience, at this time to abolish the gold and the establishment of the U.S. dollar, for fear of making a mistake. A deeper concern is that the hidden dangers of the British pound has not yet been eradicated, the Soviet Union's power is expanding, if this time immediately proposed to impose the dollar standard to the world, can not be ruled out that the British pound to re-occupy the mountain as the king of the ruble divided into territories, the franc embraces the complexity of the situation.

If the embrace of gold, the problem is much simpler, on the one hand, does not affect the United States of America's currency dominance, on the other hand, more can show the United States of America's selflessness to collect the hearts of the world. The United States has 70% of the world's gold reserves after the war, drop gold that is to drop the United States. The United States controls the real power of the world's currency, Britain's deep dependence on U.S. debt, requiring Britain to support the gold is a logical thing; France's gold reserves are second only to the United States, the franc zone in the 20's is a group of cool gold European countries and their colonies to form a trade system, France is bound to support the gold; Soviet Union's ruble has been using the gold standard, in the United States to aid in the temptation of the United States has been to send a delegation to participate in the the Bretton Woods conference. If the Soviets were told directly that the world would adopt the dollar standard in the future, Stalin would immediately turn his back on it, while gold would draw the Soviet Union into the U.S.-led world monetary system. In this way, it would not be difficult to unify the world of currencies. When the time is right, then cut off the link between the dollar and gold, the world has long been accustomed to the dollar, the backlash will be much easier to control.

The dollar chose Cao Cao's way of thinking, give up the false name, only real profit. Wait for the right time to abolish the gold and stand on its own feet!

The gold-exchange standard created by Bretton Woods is the name of the gold standard, but the reality of the dollar standard.

In addition to the "gold dynasty, the dollar regency" this one monetary center, the first basic point is the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The American positioning of the IMF is a mechanism to stabilize the exchange rate of each country. 20 century and 20 years of the world's currency "Three Musketeers" - New York Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Strong, the Bank of England's Norman, the German Central Bank of Schachter The "Three Musketeers" of the 1920s - Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Norman of the Bank of England, and Schacht of the German Central Bank - were the central figures in stabilizing exchange rates. In private gatherings, they worked behind the scenes to finalize the relationship between the value of the currencies of the countries, and then asked their respective governments to accept it. After World War II, the role the United States wanted the IMF to play was to replace the function of the Big Four back then, with a more legitimate, regulated and standardized process for stabilizing countries' exchange rates.

In 1933, Roosevelt had disdained exchange rate stabilization, why now become the United States must face a major problem? In World War II, the United States in order to support the consuming war, the full start of the economic machine, basically realize the universal employment, get rid of the high unemployment of the Great Depression trouble. When peace comes, the U.S. will have to face a huge overcapacity problem, and the war has made the U.S. heavily dependent on foreign needs. Before the end of the war, the United States had already realized that it must maintain 60 million jobs in order to achieve the basic employment of society, if there is no overseas market to absorb the huge domestic production capacity, high unemployment nightmare will come to the United States again. At this point, the resumption of international trade was of strategic importance to the United States.

In order to achieve a stable monetary system, national currencies and the dollar to determine the ratio of the relationship between the dollar and the dollar's commitment to 35 dollars for 1 ounce of gold, so that the national currency through the dollar indirectly realize the value of gold and the lock of the relationship. And the IMF is to ensure that this currency ratio relationship stability of a kind of fund. When a country's currency and the set exchange rate deviation is too large, the country can from the fund according to their own amount of overdraft part of the money, used to intervene in the national currency, in order to make the exchange rate back to within the prescribed range.

The initial establishment of this fund, the United States naturally out of the big head, 2.8 billion U.S. dollars accounted for 27%, the British empire as a whole accounted for 25%, because a variety of resolutions need a majority of 80% of the vote in order to be passed, so the United Kingdom and the United States have the right of veto, which is the U.S. to the United Kingdom to give a face, we all come to *** with the rule of the world monetary system, but the United States is clear that the United Kingdom is unlikely to be voted on by the empire of all the Autonomous States under the Empire have all their voting rights centralized. Therefore, it was still the US that had the final say.

The British had their own considerations about the role of the IMF at first. For the currency standard, the British negotiator Keynes suggested that an international monetary unit, the Bank (Bancor), should be created, and instead of using the dollar and gold, everyone borrowing and repaying money should use this kind of world dollar. Moreover, the IMF should be a world central bank, assume the role of lender of last resort, that is, in times of crisis, can create unlimited money. The UK's little calculations have been a bit too much, because the UK is over-indebted and desperately in need of money, so it wants the IMF to be an ATM that can overdraft and spend money, but it doesn't want to be specifically indebted to a particular country's currency, and so it comes up with a fuzzy and ambiguous Banque. And ultimately for this fuzzy currency debt to pay the bill is obviously a large surplus of the United States.

The Americans thought to themselves, "It's a pipe dream! No longer use the dollar, then so many years the United States is not for nothing? Scrap gold? The dollar is not so bold, Keynes came up with that "half man, half god" Bank, anyone believe? Want to set up a world central bank? Then the Federal Reserve to drink the northwest wind ah? Want to take the IMF as an ATM, the Americans finally help pay the bill? This is too much wishful thinking!

The Americans rejected Keynes's proposals one by one, insisting that the IMF is not a bank but a fund. Everyone must contribute money up front, which can be borrowed and transferred as needed, and then it has to be repaid, or the shares will shrink accordingly. Britain had to accept the U.S. conditions, when the currency boss, but now fell to a falling phoenix is not as good as a chicken.

The second basic point of the Bretton Woods system is the World Bank. The original purpose of the World Bank was to finance post-war reconstruction, and later to finance the development of less developed countries was also taken into account.

In terms of actual operation, the United States treats the World Bank loans as lollipops to reward countries, as long as they are willing to submit to the Bretton Woods dynasty, give up the idea of self-sufficiency in economic development, cut back on tariffs and trade protection, and are willing to become the good people of the dollar empire, such a country will be able to get the World Bank's funding. Anyone who fails to join this US-dominated global system is choosing economic "self-exile".

The United States at this time has completed the transformation from a staunch practitioner of trade protection to an active advocate of free trade. The fundamental temperament of the United States is a businessman, businessman heavy practical, do not believe in the so-called doctrine, what is favorable to me, resolutely use, what is unfavorable to me, decisively abandoned, contempt for all other people's judgments! IMF, the World Bank, including the later GATT (predecessor of the WTO), all reflecting the United States of America's distinctive businessman's temperament.

Precisely because the rise of the United States relies on trade protection, so the United States is particularly jealous of other countries to go back to "their own old way". This is like the Song dynasty Zhao Kuangyin by the yellow robe on the throne of the emperor, who want to wear a yellow robe in front of him blindly sneaking, must have violated his taboo.

While the U.S. has completed its regency, the hidden dangers of the British pound have not yet been cut. Cutting the great cause is not yet finished, the dollar still need to work.

Killing the pound, the dollar has no poison

[15]

[15]

It is outrageous that our reward for losing a quarter of our national wealth in the anti-fascist ****ing business is a half-century's worth of incense and tribute to the countries that have been enriched by the war. [15]

--British Economist〗

The British Empire's vast colonial system provided Britain with nearly unlimited credit overdraft powers during the war, with colonies and Commonwealth countries supplying the British army with all sorts of resources, food, and raw materials, and including the costs of the British army's campaigns in Egypt and India, and even the American troops there were also counted against Britain, as well as the cost of Indian troops assisting British troops in fighting overseas, and so on. They subscribed to British treasury bonds and accumulated large reserves of pounds, which was a major reason why Britain was able to survive the depletion of the war and eventually win. Britain's colonial system and other trading partners supplied Britain with goods in exchange for sterling reserves, while Britain and the Allies consumed dollar reserves to buy arms from the U.S. The result was that after the war the total size of sterling in each country's reserves was double the size of dollar reserves. On the face of it, the pound is larger than the dollar reserves and remains the world's dominant currency, but 2/3 of these reserves are concentrated within the pound area and are under a high degree of instability.

The countries in the sterling area accumulated large amounts of pounds, not because they were more valuable, but because Britain's wartime freeze froze their options for exchanging them for other currencies. The presence of the US dollar made the pound a constant and significant threat of being sold off by the sterling area countries. Prior to World War I, Britain's foreign assets were much higher than its liabilities, so the stability of the value of the pound was unquestioned. But now the United Kingdom, net foreign liabilities have reached as high as 15 billion dollars, six times its gold and foreign exchange reserves! If the pound once lifted the freeze on foreign exchange, countries will scramble to convert the pound reserves into dollars, the pound will immediately face a catastrophic avalanche of value.

The United Kingdom should have continued to freeze foreign pound reserves, and then use the United Kingdom's domestic exports to gradually repay these foreign debts, so that not only can pull British employment, out of the shadow of the post-war recession, but also to stabilize the value of the pound, and most importantly, is to maintain the existence of the pound area, as long as there is this economic base, and later rise again is not impossible. The lifting of the freeze, the British pound area will have to defect to the dollar, not only to help the United States expand exports, strengthen the sphere of influence of the dollar area, and the British pound area will be fundamentally into the collapse, the situation of the world.

World War II has just ended, Keynes as the core brain of the British economy, on behalf of the United Kingdom went to the United States to negotiate post-war loans, but this is a matter of life and death of the British pound area of the big problem of a serious error of judgment in the United States set a trap, thus personally burying the hegemony of the British pound 200 years.

The Americans proposed to Keynes that the United States could provide Britain with a credit line of 3.75 billion dollars, counting in addition the 1.25 billion dollars that Canada could provide, a total of **** 5 billion dollars. But only on condition that Britain had until July 15, 1947, to unfreeze foreign sterling reserves!

Super conceited Keynes, originally thought that the United States and Britain are allies, but also with the same language and species blood brothers, the United States will be generous to relax the loan conditions, they are prepared for the grand strategy, ready to talk to the United States and the future of the United Kingdom and the United States *** with the world's domination of the wonderful vision, but did not guard against the United States put forward such "each other is too anxious! The United States was totally unprepared for the conditions that the United States put forward, "It is too urgent for each other to suffer". Keynes really did not understand the political power of the United States, he actually agreed!

The British Economist, commenting on Keynes's loan, pointedly noted that "not many people in this country would believe the theory of the ****productivists that the destruction of Britain and of all that Britain stood for in the world was a premeditated and conscious purpose of American policy. But the evidence as it stands may be read in this way: if conditions are attached to every grant of aid, so as to bring Britain to the inescapable inevitability of having to ask again for more aid, which can only be obtained by further self-degrading and self-defeating Britain. The result, then, would obviously be what the ****productivists have surmised." [16]

And sure enough, on July 15, 1947, the hegemony of the British pound collapsed completely [17]. After the war, Britain had counted on a resurgence based on the sterling area, but the Americans wouldn't give the British Empire a chance to resurrect itself.

The mighty hegemony of the British pound, which Germany had struggled to shake by waging two world wars, was easily destroyed by the United States with a mere fly in the ointment of a $3.75 billion loan.

Currency Cold War, the rejection of the dollar is the rejection of peace

The Soviet Union's rejection of the Bretton Woods system was not the result of the Cold War, but precisely the cause of it.

Since coming to power in 1933, Roosevelt spent the major part of his tenure in mortal combat with the economic crisis, which he felt most keenly, the 12-year-long Depression and the nightmare of unemployment for more than 10 million people in the United States. World War II, while destroying the European economy, the U.S. economy soared by 90%, and the fate of the future U.S. excess production capacity and the huge employed population would depend on the post-war boom in world trade. To this end, he was determined to break down all trade barriers in the world, completely eradicate the respective cut-off currency areas, liberate the colonial raw material bases under the control of Britain and France, penetrate the resources and labor supply of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, absorb China, Japan and other Asian countries into the world market, and set up a world market with the U.S.A. as the centerpiece of political power, the U.S. dollar as the basis for currency and finance, and the unification of the world market as the goal of the "permanent peace under the rule of the United States of America."

Roosevelt was convinced that the British Empire, waiting for an opportunity to make a comeback, was the main obstacle to American strategy, and that the Soviet Union, whose economy had been almost completely destroyed by the war, was completely different from Britain. The Soviet Union had no overseas colonial system, its industry was far from adequate to compete with the United States, its agriculture was an even bigger market for American agricultural products, and it posed no threat in terms of foreign investment. After the war friction, Roosevelt considered Stalin a trustworthy world-class leader with no immediate impulse to subvert the world capitalist system; on the contrary, Roosevelt did not take kindly to Churchill's narrow-mindedness and frequent petty maneuvers. For this reason, it was in line with the ultimate U.S. strategic goal to make the necessary political compromises and economic assistance to the Soviet Union and to integrate the Soviet Union into the U.S. world system.

American bankers believe that the phenomenon of the U.S.S.R. occupying vast continents at each end of the globe and controlling vast resources in areas that do not compete with each other must be viewed as a dominant and dominating force in the course of future history. Both the Soviet government and U.S. financiers had an abiding interest in maintaining a managed gold standard, due to the fact that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union possessed the largest gold reserves and were again both potentially the largest producers of gold. Although the Soviet economy was state-controlled, it was not an expansionist theorist. In contrast to Britain, the Soviet Union would in no way threaten U.S. export and international investment programs. The Soviet Union's huge domestic demand would result in its resources being used primarily for domestic needs rather than for economic penetration of other countries [4].

But Kennan and most U.S. politicians were far from having Roosevelt's strategic vision and verve. Roosevelt's illness and death on the eve of victory in the war in April 1945 interrupted the established strategic planning of the United States. Vice President Truman, who had been living in the shadow of the great president, was finally "made right". He was sensitive and paranoid, and was especially wary of being compared to Roosevelt's policies, and he wanted to demonstrate his own decisiveness and self-confidence with great intensity. Truman not only replaced all the White House interiors that gave him a sense of Roosevelt's presence, but also replaced officials who adhered to Roosevelt's strategy.

Kennan could not understand why, in the highest Allied decision-making circles in Europe, the Americans had always been profoundly wary of the British and more friendly to the Soviets instead; why General Patton, the most radical of the anti-Soviets, had been repeatedly sidelined by the American military hierarchy.

What made Kennan even more indignant was the fact that American aid to the Soviet Union was far better than to Britain. Just before the end of the war on August 13, the U.S. military did not wait for the president's order to stop the delivery of munitions to the United Kingdom; Japan announced the surrender of the same day, without prior consultation with the United Kingdom, unilaterally terminated the Lend-Lease Act to the United Kingdom's assistance and began to liquidate the materials left in the United Kingdom commuted to a debt of 532 million U.S. dollars, the supplies still in transit and the British owed an additional 118 million, and Britain immediately needed to repay more of the U.S. Lend-Lease debt than Britain's foreign exchange reserves, forcing Britain immediately into a harsh economic predicament. The U.S., on the other hand, was very forgiving to the Soviet Union, and until the end of October, when the war was long over, the U.S. still provided the Soviet Union with as much as $250 million in aid.

What made Kennan most uncomfortable was the pro-Soviet policy of the U.S. Treasury Department, which in June 1943 offered the Soviet Union a $763 million share of the future International Monetary Fund (IMF), later talking about $1.2 billion. The U.S. began with a $2.5 billion share, Britain about half that, and the Soviet Union and China third and fourth. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau proposed to Roosevelt a post-war aid loan to the Soviet Union of up to $6 billion, with a 30-year repayment period and an interest rate of only 2.5%, which was far better than the demoralizing $3.75 billion aid loan to Britain negotiated by Keynes. Later, Morgenthau's men, the Bretton Woods program of the United States, the main negotiator representative White, in a memorandum to Roosevelt, suggested that the United States to the Soviet Union to provide $ 10 billion in aid loans, the repayment period of 35 years, the interest rate down to 2%.

It was because he could not figure out the pro-Soviet tendencies of the U.S. government that Kennan had repeatedly written to the Soviet Union, deploring the fact that it could not be counted on, concluding that the Soviet Union was necessarily expansionist in nature. But in Roosevelt's time, Kennan's opinion was synonymous with short-sightedness and superficiality, and was certainly not taken seriously.

But the shift in international strategic thinking in the Truman era presented Kennan with a historic opportunity to make his mark.

In the Yalta system established by the triumvirate of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in February 1945, Stalin proposed that Eastern Europe should be included in the Soviet sphere of influence, and Churchill had run to Moscow beforehand to make a deal with Stalin whereby Britain would recognize the Soviet sphere of influence in Romania and Bulgaria while the Soviet Union would recognize British prerogatives in Greece because the Mediterranean was the British Empire's maritime lifeline, while Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union's security buffer. When Roosevelt heard this news, he was shocked. Britain was obviously doing this to maintain the vast system of the British Empire, and the Soviet Union, by placing Eastern Europe under protection, would create another cutthroat force. In this way, Roosevelt's ideal of destroying currency secession and creating a single world market would not be ruined. The conflict centered on Poland. Britain and the United States, of course, wanted a pro-Western government in Poland, but the Soviet Union had liberated and occupied Poland, and Stalin demanded that the Polish government be subordinate to the Soviet Union. The final compromise between the two sides was that Stalin promised to place some pro-Western officials in the Polish government to represent the voice of the West. Roosevelt found this unsatisfactory, but it was barely acceptable; after all, there is a difference between the ideal and the reality. As long as the Soviet Union enters the Bretton Woods system, the United States is the ultimate winner, for this reason, make some partial compromise is still necessary.

The trouble is that after Roosevelt's death, Truman wanted to overturn the case. Without Roosevelt's prestige, opposition to the U.S. policy of appeasement of the Soviet Union began to appear, Truman absolutely did not want to become the second Chamberlain, he decided that he had to be tough on the Soviet Union. U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Harriman began to spread the word that economic aid to the USSR was linked to Poland and Eastern Europe. Stalin became wary, wasn't this out of line? Was US policy going to change once Roosevelt died? Stalin rejected Truman and pointed out that the American demands contradicted the spirit of the Yalta Resolution. Of course, Stalin did not want to stalemate the issue and finally suggested that the quota of pro-Western officials in Poland be increased by a few more. Truman reluctantly agreed.

But the ensuing Soviet-American rows over Turkey, Iran, and a host of other issues left Stalin y skeptical of America's ultimate intentions. Many of the Soviet Union's original doubts about Bretton Woods now began to fester anew. "In their discussions of the Bretton Woods agreement, the Soviets expressed concern about the White Plan, which allegedly proposed the abolition of all restrictions on trade, and currency in the near future. It seemed to them quite obvious that under contemporary capitalist conditions, especially in the post-war period, such a path would be impossible for many countries to adopt. For their economic independence would be seriously jeopardized if national regulatory measures were not adopted." The Soviet representative made it clear: "The reason why they are in the most brutal war ever fought is not to make the world safer for American and British exports." Stalin finally saw that the pressure the U.S. was applying to push for free trade was ultimately aimed at grasping control of the economies of Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union in U.S. hands. The Soviet Union did not refuse to join the IMF, "but simply wanted to tell U.S. officials that Moscow needed more time to consider the terms of the agreement."

The Soviet Union was waiting and seeing what the U.S. would do.

The February 22 cable from the U.S. Treasury Department to Kennan was precisely intended to find out the Soviet Union's real motives for delaying IMF membership[5]. And Kennan used this opportunity to write, wrote as long as 8,000 words of telegrams, his personal negative judgment of the Soviet Union for many years, sublimated to the theoretical height of the "Han and thieves can not be separated", for Truman refused to do the "Chamberlain's second" urgent Truman's refusal to be "Chamberlain's second" as an urgent political gesture provided ideological ammunition, and won a round of applause in Washington's suddenly changing political atmosphere. Kennan has also become popular since then, and has been called the "originator of the Cold War".

The Soviet Union, in the following months, did not see the U.S. aid loan, but waited for Churchill's "Iron Curtain Speech". Disappointed, the Soviet Union declared its refusal to join the IMF and the World Bank, and parted ways with the Bretton Woods system.

The U.S. attempted to use currency and trade to bring the Soviet Union into the U.S. dollar empire was finally dashed. The Cold War, which lasted more than 40 years, cost $8 trillion, cut hundreds of thousands of lives short and split millions of families, began.

From then on, the Soviet Union chose to separate itself from the dollar dynasty and set about building its own ruble empire.

Roosevelt was far more wary of the pound's resurgence in World War II than he was of ruble expansion. In order to create the most favorable international environment for the United States after the war, Roosevelt was determined to break down all the barriers to trade in the world, completely eradicate their respective cut-off currency areas, liberate the colonial raw material bases under the control of Britain and France, penetrate the Soviet Union and the Eastern European region of the supply of resources and labor, and absorb China, Japan and other Asian countries to enter the world market, and to establish a U.S. for the core of the political power to the United States as the currency of the monetary A "permanent peace under the United States of America" was established with the United States as the core of political power, the US dollar as the monetary and financial foundation, and the unification of the world market as the goal. After Roosevelt's death, the U.S. Cold War originators overthrew his policy and pressed forward, forcing Stalin to eventually reject the Bretton Woods system and build his own ruble empire instead, thus kicking off the Cold War.

The ruble, in Lenin's new economic era, established the gold exchange standard, known as the gold ruble. In Stalin's time, the ruble evolved into a "planned standard", which was no longer an active medium of exchange for commodities, but a passive measure of the turnover of "barter" in a planned economy.

Stalin's 10-year plan to catch up with the Western industrial powers in the 1930s, like China's 156 key industrial projects built with Soviet aid in the 1950s, could not have succeeded without large-scale technological diffusion and the primitive accumulation provided by the countryside. And the only country that could provide the diffusion of Western technology at that time was Germany, which had been defeated in World War I. The Soviet Union was the only country that could provide the diffusion of Western technology at that time. In fact, it was with the support and funding of the German military that the Soviet Union was able to learn and borrow modern advanced industrial technology.

After the war, the Soviet Union, with its strong military and national power, fought a fierce battle with the U.S. dollar in currency circulation domains around the world. It was not until the mid-1960s, due to the stagnation of the Soviet Union's own economy, that the ruble gradually formed a long-term confrontation with the dollar.

The oil crisis of the 1970s led the United States to discover a powerful economic weapon: the oil trade. The United States in the 80s, it is the effective use of oil this deadly "dollar dagger", only a knife into the heart of the ruble empire.