In this respect, two viable approaches would be: 1) ‘off-market’ gold sales, which are executed directly between the parties and facilitated by an intermediary; and 2) gold swaps, where the metal is exchanged for foreign exchange deposits (or other reserve assets) with an agreement that the transaction be reversed at an agreed future date, at an agreed price. (Source: IMF).
Speech at the House of Lords (23 May 1944), in Collected writings, Vol. XXVII, pp. 9ff. In fact, Keynes argued that the dollar standard established at Bretton Woods was the ‘exact opposite’ of the gold standard he had so forcefully criticised in the past, but he accepted that gold could serve a useful function as ‘a convenient common denominator’.