DEPARTMENT OF STATE Publication 2866 International Organization and DIVISION OF PUBLICATIONS OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office Washington 25, D. C. - Price $3.50 DEPOSITED BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OCT 29 '48 Preface T HESE volumes of Proceedings and Documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1-22, 1944, are intended primarily as a collection of working papers. The documents included in this publication are reproduced exactly as they were issued at the Conference site, except for some slight rewording of document titles, and with no attempt at editing. The substantive Conference documents have been arranged for publication in numerical order, except for certain types of documents such as press releases and French and Spanish translations, which were believed more properly to belong in appendixes. Appropriate annotations in the form of footnotes have been added where required. Certain types of documents of a purely administrative nature, such as announcements and news bulletins, have been omitted. In addition, the tables of contents and social and other announcements have been deleted from the issues of the Journal. A complete list of all documents issued at the Conference, with specific reference to those that have been omitted, has been included as Appendix II. A list of the symbols used to differentiate the various series of documents has been included as Appendix III. The principal substantive documents are included in Volume I of the Proceedings; the remaining substantive material, together with a comprehensive index, will be found in Volume II. The reader will find the index to be the key to the many documents contained in the two volumes. The Department of State, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development have collaborated in the arrangement of materials in these volumes; they have also shared the initial costs of publication. Introduction HEN currency systems were restored after the last war, there was little or no attempt at coordination of measures to provide stability; no machinery was set up to facilitate an orderly adjustment of exchange rates when fundamental conditions necessitated such a revision. The disturbances of the 1930's, involving a resort to competitive currency depreciation, imposition of exchange restrictions, import quotas, and other devices which all but stifled trade, made it clear that improved international financial arrangements were necessary. Currency and exchange difficulties are generally regarded as contributing to a considerable extent to the economic and political breakdown of that period. During the war financial experts in all countries early came to the recognition that the postwar world would stand in great need of some stabilizing influence in the international financial field. Discussion of international financial objectives and procedures was stimulated as the war progressed until the middle of 1943 when the first informal discussion of technical experts from a large number of countries was held in Washington. Following this meeting concrete proposals from Canada, China, France, Great Britain, and the United States were exchanged, and in April of 1944 the Joint Statement of Experts on the International Monetary Fund' was published simultaneously in Washington, London, Moscow, Chungking, Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and Habana. The report was also published in full or abbreviated form in many other countries. It reported the views of the experts of the numerous consulting countries and constituted the basis for the development of the subsequent detailed plan. Time had not permitted preparation of a similar statement with respect to an international investment bank. The discussions had indicated a large measure of agreement on a proposal for the establishment of such a bank, but the plan was not so far advanced as that for the monetary fund. 1 This joint statement is printed in Appendix IV, p. 1629. |