Federal Reserve Policy and Bretton Woods

Michael Bordo and Owen Humpage

No 20656, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: During the Bretton Woods era, balance-of-payments developments, gold losses, and exchange-rate concerns had little influence on Federal Reserve monetary policy, even after 1958 when such issues became critical. The Federal Reserve could largely disregard international considerations because the U.S. Treasury instituted a number of stopgap devices—the gold pool, the general agreement to borrow, capital restraints, sterilized foreign-exchange operations—to shore up the dollar and Bretton Woods. These, however, gave Federal Reserve policymakers the latitude to focus on the domestic objectives and shifted responsibility for international developments to the Treasury. Removing the pressure of international considerations from Federal Reserve policy decisions made it easier for the Federal Reserve to pursue the inflationary policies of the late 1960s and 1970s that ultimate destroyed Bretton Woods. In the end, the Treasury’s stopgap devices, which were intended to support Bretton Woods, contributed to its demise.

JEL-codes: E5 N1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mac and nep-mon
Note: DAE ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Federal Reserve Policy and Bretton Woods (2014)
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