Bretton Woods Conference

The Bretton Woods Conference, formally the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, brought delegates from forty-four Allied nations to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in July 1944 to design the postwar international economic order. Its two chief architects were John Maynard Keynes, advising the British Treasury, and Harry Dexter White of the United States Treasury. The conference created the International Monetary Fund, charged with overseeing a system of fixed exchange rates centered on the US dollar and gold, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, later known as the World Bank, to finance the reconstruction of war-damaged economies and the development of poorer ones. The US Congress authorized American participation through the Bretton Woods Agreements Act in July 1945, and both institutions began operating before the end of that year.