The World Bank and International Monetary Fund

In July 1944, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to design a postwar international monetary order that would avoid the competitive devaluations, protectionism, and financial chaos of the interwar Great Depression. The conference was dominated by two rival plans: the British delegation, led by economist John Maynard Keynes, proposed an international clearing union with a supranational currency (the "bancor"), while the American delegation, led by U.S. Treasury official Harry Dexter White, proposed a system of fixed exchange rates pegged to the U.S. dollar, itself convertible to gold at $35 per ounce. White's plan prevailed, reflecting America's dominant postwar economic position, and the conference established two new institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), tasked with overseeing exchange-rate stability and providing short-term balance-of-payments support, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), tasked initially with financing European reconstruction and now the core institution of the World Bank Group. Both began operations in 1945–1946, headquartered a few blocks apart in Washington, D.C.