The IMF Swoon

The original vision of the IMF was as an agency attending to global stability, not the interests of the nation from which the managing director hails. Along with the World Bank, the agency was created at an alcohol-fueled conference of 730 delegates from 44 nations, convened 72 years ago in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. No matter that the delegates from one of the important attendees, the Soviet Union, did not speak English: Harry Dexter White, the head of the U.S. delegation, was a Soviet agent who kept Moscow informed of the goings-on. The IMF was to monitor a world of fixed exchange rates linked to the dollar and gold, part of a plan by FDR and Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, Jr. to eliminate Britain and its currency as world players.