ABSTRACT

The Fund came into being progressively. It was only after the election of its third managing director, Per Jacobsson, in 1956 that its activities and its authority began to live up to what its founders had hoped for. While in the first years of its life the Fund, on the whole, conformed to the spirit of Bretton Woods, the period was marked by some developments not altogether in that spirit. The new rate of exchange proposed by the British, and approved by the Americans, was naturally accepted by the Board of the Fund. European monetary cooperation was reborn from the ashes of World War II, and reborn in a manner that involved a certain amount of American participation. But the United States had favored and encouraged its creation, just as it had the first tentative moves toward multilateralization of intra-European payments. The European Payments Union (EPU) received an initial revolving fund in dollars drawn from Marshall Plan resources.