Bretton Woods Conference

Bretton Woods Conference, popular name of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference that took place July 1-22, 1944, at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. The conference, attended by representatives of 44 nations, was convened to plan currency stabilization and credit in the post-war economic order. It resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), to provide respectively short and long term credit for the world economy. The conference also proposed an international currency regime maintaining more or less stable exchange rates between currencies. This informal system maintained currency stability until broken apart by speculative pressures in the aftermath of the oil price rises of 1973.