The International Monetary System: Imbalance and Recovery

Abstract

The international payments system between 1945 and 1955 was dominated by what quickly came to be called ‘the dollar problem’. Sir Dennis Robertson, writing in 1954, defined it as ‘a persistent tendency on the part of the populations of the world outside North America to spend more in that region than the sum of what they are earning in that region and what the inhabitants of that region are disposed to lend to them or invest in their borders under the play of ordinary economic motive. The symptoms of the disease are a continuous pressure on the monetary reserves of the extra-North American countries….’¹