Last updated on April 8th, 2026 at 11:25 am
In July 1944, while World War II was still raging, delegates from 44 nations gathered in New Hampshire, United States, to design a new international monetary system. The world was broken, and Europe was physically destroyed. Trade had collapsed, trust between nations was fragile, and leaders knew that if they did not build a stable financial order, the chaos of the 1930s could repeat itself.
The result was the Bretton Woods agreement; it created a dollar-based system where currencies were pegged to the US dollar and the dollar was convertible into gold. It also led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to support post-war reconstruction and stabilize global finance. According to historical data from the Federal Reserve and IMF archives, the United States controlled roughly two-thirds of official global gold reserves by the end of the war, which gave it enormous leverage in negotiations. That concentration of reserves shaped the currency hierarchy that has followed ever since.
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