Reflections About the Future of the North American Dollar

In the last months of 1944, World War II was about to end and the United States had become the undisputed world’s leading economic power. In this context, what was known today as the Bretton Woods Conference was installed. In this Conference, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created, and the US proposal to convert the dollar into currency world was accepted. After the signature of the agreement, it is attributed to Charles de Gaulle (future president of France) the phrase that the United States could buy the world with papers. For this not to happen, the United States pledged to exchange their dollars for gold at a rate of $ 35 a troy ounce. That is, when some Central Bank of the world had hoarded dollars, it could approach the Federal Reserve Bank and exchange these for gold. However, the US was losing its reserves in gold, reason why in 1971 it only could answer for the 17% of the dollars that were circulating in the world. In these circumstances, President Richard Nixon, on August 15 of that year, declared the dollar’s inconvertibility in gold. Since that date, the dollar has become a fully fiduciary currency (depends on the dollar’s confidence) and many authors now agree that the greatest support of the US dollar is actually the US war capacity.

• Egile nagusia: Salgado Defranc, Eddy (author)
• Formatua: article
• Hizkuntza: spa
• Argitaratua: 2016
• Gaiak: reserve currency; Richard Nixon; Charles de Gaulle; John Maynar Keynes; Bretton Woods; moneda de reserva
• Sarrera elektronikoa: https://revistas.ute.edu.ec/index.php/economia-y-negocios/article/view/176