Yet the conference laid down principles and established institutions that governed the global economy for three decades. Many of them are still in place today, more than 60 years later. The difficult phase we are passing through now, while certainly not as cataclysmic as 1944, may well prove to be a watershed. We had the original Bretton Woods system until 1971.
Since the turn of the millennium, we have had what some have called a market-led “Bretton Woods II”. Let me ask then: should we move now to a “Bretton Woods III”, that is, to a new order for the global financial and monetary system? And if so, how? This question requires deep thinking and cannot obviously be resolved in a few minutes.