Casting for an international solution
Can a new Bretton Woods-type summit solve the financial crisis?
The financial crisis isn’t close to over, said Sebastian Mallaby in The Washington Post, but Europeans are already trying to “extract lessons from it.” Under pressure, the U.S. agreed to a “new Bretton Woods summit,” after the 1944 meeting that “inoculated the world against a repeat of the Great Depression” and gave us the IMF and World Bank. It won’t work this time. World markets do need restructuring, but "photo-op summits” won’t get us there.
We need to do something, said Chris Osborne in Britain’s The Guardian, and if a viable new framework is possible, “we should attempt to create one.” A new IMF, for example, could work "to protect the system from irrational exuberance” by coordinating tighter bank and insurance regulations and acting as a financial “early warning system.”
We’re forgetting our history, said George Cooper in Britain’s The Telegraph. Bretton Woods I, whose “defining element” was a system of fixed exchange rates, “ended in ignominious failure in 1971,” with the demise of the gold standard. Bretton Woods II, pegging currencies to the U.S. dollar, helped create our current mess. “The last thing we need is a Bretton Woods III.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
5 weather-beaten cartoons about the Texas floods
Cartoons Artists take on funding cuts, politicizing tragedy, and more
-
What has the Dalai Lama achieved?
The Explainer Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader has just turned 90, and he has been clarifying his reincarnation plans
-
Europe's heatwave: the new front line of climate change
In the Spotlight How will the continent adapt to 'bearing the brunt of climate change'?