ABSTRACT
During the whole of the period 1958-71, the United States ran a deficit in its balance of payments-Doubt about the equivalence between the dollar and gold, which first raised its head about 1960, spread right up to the moment in August 1971 when the nonconvertibility of the dollar was officially proclaimed. The most interesting developments during the years immediately after 1958 were the tentative moves toward organizing new forms of collaboration between North America and Western Europe. In the spring of 1971, responding to domestic economic considerations, the American authorities relaxed their monetary policy. Thus the Americans and the British accepted the principle of a system of special monetary cooperation among ten, or rather eleven, governments. But they accepted it in a somewhat ambiguous form because the Group of Ten was only partly distinct from the Fund and constituted a small club inside the big club. This ambiguity ultimately gave birth to many problems.
