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If you are referring to Bretton-Woods Conference, it is not obscure at all. It is probably the most important monetary event in modern history and probably ever

If you are referring to Bretton-Woods Conference, it is not obscure at all. It is probably the most important monetary event in modern history and probably everyone with economics background knows about it. Also it was during WWII. But you are right that parts of it (like the international clearing union and its implications) are just mentioned in passing in economic courses and rarely acknowledged nowadays.

arethuza 9y ago
Do economists look at things like Bretton-Woods from a purely "theoretical" perspective (for lack of a better term) or do they also take into account the political and global power level tensions driving that kind of decision making?
- notahacker 9y ago
  As a general rule, economists tend to look at theoretical models of how systems are supposed to work and whether those assumptions fit the data and economic historians tend to look at why policies were introduced or recommended and what their proponents and detractors thought about then. They do tend to share departments, students and reading lists though.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    That would appear to be like someone coming up with a theory of the movement of sailing boats without accounting for the weather! :-)
    - hedonistbot 9y ago
      That's economics for you. That's why I switched fields some time ago. It is a "science" that consistently gives flawed predictions and it's is often used to provide cover for political ideologies.
    - notahacker 9y ago
      Or evaluating code without intimate familiarity with the internal politics of the dev team that wrote it :-)
spangry 9y ago
It's only my faint impression, but I think there's some renewed interest in some sort of international financial / monetary framework similar to Bretton-Woods. The governor of the Chinese central bank publicly expressed interest (and explicitly invoked Bretton-Woods) a few months ago. And other 'mainstream' central banking authorities seem to be acknowledging that there are big deficiencies with the current model (e.g http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp160210_slides.pdf http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp160210_slides.pdf) I think the problem is that it's such a huge issue. It makes sense the original agreement was hammered out towards the end of WWII: people were 'thinking big' at the time. I worry that we are only capable of making such big and forward-thinking moves in the wake of some catastrophe or war... EDIT: The 'renewed interest' is actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Keynes' Bancor proposal, and it looks like the governor of the Chinese central bank has been talking about this for some time now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor#Proposed_revival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor#Proposed_revival
- arethuza 9y ago
  Similar to what was actually agreed at Bretton-Woods (which was effectively what the US dictated) or what Keynes proposed?
- hedonistbot 9y ago
  There was some noise about bringing about a world reserve currency in the years after 2008 but not much came of it. There was a big increase of the SDR allotments to handle the bailouts that were expected immediately after the crisis. And Chinese currency is now part of the SDR basket. But I don't think a world currency outside of US control will be allowed to exist. Also Keynes' ideas on handling imbalances goes in the face of what politicians have been saying for decades: "Deficits are bad, and surpluses are good." So neither the public nor the politicians are ready to even acknowledge that there might be problems with this logic.
  - atmosx 9y ago
    In a closed system your surplus is someone else's deficit, that's not a hard concept. The problem is seems to be cultural (some cultures consider debt a sin or a divine punishment) and educational (even renowned economists trying to explain macro-economics to the layman resort to false analogies e.g. Comparing the economy of a country with a household economy, when in reality the way these work is the exact opposite).

arethuza 9y ago

Do economists look at things like Bretton-Woods from a purely "theoretical" perspective (for lack of a better term) or do they also take into account the political and global power level tensions driving that kind of decision making?

notahacker 9y ago
As a general rule, economists tend to look at theoretical models of how systems are supposed to work and whether those assumptions fit the data and economic historians tend to look at why policies were introduced or recommended and what their proponents and detractors thought about then. They do tend to share departments, students and reading lists though.
- arethuza 9y ago
  That would appear to be like someone coming up with a theory of the movement of sailing boats without accounting for the weather! :-)
  - hedonistbot 9y ago
    That's economics for you. That's why I switched fields some time ago. It is a "science" that consistently gives flawed predictions and it's is often used to provide cover for political ideologies.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Or evaluating code without intimate familiarity with the internal politics of the dev team that wrote it :-)

spangry 9y ago

It's only my faint impression, but I think there's some renewed interest in some sort of international financial / monetary framework similar to Bretton-Woods. The governor of the Chinese central bank publicly expressed interest (and explicitly invoked Bretton-Woods) a few months ago. And other 'mainstream' central banking authorities seem to be acknowledging that there are big deficiencies with the current model (e.g http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp160210_slides.pdf http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp160210_slides.pdf) I think the problem is that it's such a huge issue. It makes sense the original agreement was hammered out towards the end of WWII: people were 'thinking big' at the time. I worry that we are only capable of making such big and forward-thinking moves in the wake of some catastrophe or war... EDIT: The 'renewed interest' is actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Keynes' Bancor proposal, and it looks like the governor of the Chinese central bank has been talking about this for some time now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor#Proposed_revival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor#Proposed_revival

arethuza 9y ago
Similar to what was actually agreed at Bretton-Woods (which was effectively what the US dictated) or what Keynes proposed?
hedonistbot 9y ago
There was some noise about bringing about a world reserve currency in the years after 2008 but not much came of it. There was a big increase of the SDR allotments to handle the bailouts that were expected immediately after the crisis. And Chinese currency is now part of the SDR basket. But I don't think a world currency outside of US control will be allowed to exist. Also Keynes' ideas on handling imbalances goes in the face of what politicians have been saying for decades: "Deficits are bad, and surpluses are good." So neither the public nor the politicians are ready to even acknowledge that there might be problems with this logic.
- atmosx 9y ago
  In a closed system your surplus is someone else's deficit, that's not a hard concept. The problem is seems to be cultural (some cultures consider debt a sin or a divine punishment) and educational (even renowned economists trying to explain macro-economics to the layman resort to false analogies e.g. Comparing the economy of a country with a household economy, when in reality the way these work is the exact opposite).