ABSTRACT
The Bretton Woods conference was one of a number of interallied conferences in the later part of World War II that led to the creation of a new international organization. Hot Springs produced the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Atlantic City produced UNRRA, Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco the United Nations. But only Bretton Woods entered the language as not just a geographical locale, but far beyond that, as a mystique about a world monetary system, and more specifically as a code word for stable exchange rates. One finds this mystique all over the world, but perhaps in its most pronounced form in France. There are even indications that the French at one time tried to steal Bretton Woods from the Americans. In one of his articles Giscard d’Estaing, then the French Minister of Finance and later the President of France, referred to the international monetary system as the system of Breton Woods. All it took him was to drop the second “t” in Bretton Woods and bingo, the origin of world monetary order was transplanted from New Hampshire to Brittany.
