Abstract
John Ruggie refers to the post-war international economic order as a ‘compromise of embedded liberalism’, whereby states accepted a relatively open trading and monetary system in return for greater control over their domestic economies.2 Reflecting the US’s post-war politico-economic dominance, the reconstruction of the international monetary system under Bretton Woods established the dollar as the numeraire currency. The extension of US structural power in international finance depended upon the new role of the dollar and the interactive embeddedness of Washington and Wall Street.
What used to be a heresy is now endorsed as orthodox
John Maynard Keynes1
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Notes
Quoted from Helleiner, Eric, ‘Great Transformations: A Polanyian Perspective on the Contemporary Global Financial Order’, Studies in Political Economy, Vol. 48, Autumn 1995: 151.
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For 1960 this figure accentuates the Spring quarter when gold rose to $40 per ounce. Averaged annual figures for 1960 show the price at approximately $35.6 per ounce. See also, Gavin, Francis J., ‘The legends of Bretton Woods’, ORBIS, Vol. 40, No. 2, Spring 1996: 183–98.
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The ‘exorbitant privilege’ is often referred to, as is de Gaulle’s view that the US had a ‘monumentally overprivileged position’ In the international monetary system. See, for example, Cooper, Richard N., ‘Prolegomena’: 73n; Loriaux, Michael, France After Hegemony: International Change and Financial Reform, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991: 189–8.
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© 2001 Leonard Seabrooke
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Seabrooke, L. (2001). 1960–68: From Orthodoxy to Heresy. In: US Power in International Finance. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230513365_3
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