Word: bretton
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...regulators around the world were already jointly setting bank-capital standards before the current crisis hit. A lot of good that did us. So there is also much talk about the need for a new architecture--"a new Bretton Woods" was a phrase that echoed around Davos--to rein in global financial flows...
Shortly after the European Management Forum was founded, world events began to shift the focus of the annual meetings to encompass more global issues. The collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange system, which pegged the value of foreign currencies to the US dollar, and the Arab-Israeli War in 1973 introduced political and economic elements to the Davos discussions, and political leaders joined the European businessmen at the following meeting in January 1974. By 1976, membership in the forum was extended to the "1,000 leading companies of the world...
...Such grousing contrasts with the cheers Sarkozy drew during the darkest hours of the crisis with his clarion calls for a "refoundation of modern capitalism." Also waning is the general enthusiasm unleashed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's appeal to establish a "new Bretton Woods [by] building a new international financial architecture" - a revision of the original 1944 accords that envisioned turning the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into a global regulator of markets unified under common rules...
...Instead, most participants now seem resigned to meeting Saturday in Washington to compare notes, set another meeting after Obama takes power and then see what future international accords, if any, are feasible. "Lots of people are talking about a 'Bretton Woods 2,' but we won't be concluding a new international treaty," warned IMF chairman Dominique Strauss-Kahn. "Things aren't going to change over night...
...Some argue Bretton Woods and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank it created should have undergone revamping even before the crisis broke. Initially tasked with overseeing currency exchange rates and providing funds and advice to nations suffering trade deficits, the IMF has watched its field of action wane as economies developed and globalized. As part of that evolution, financial trading began spanning borders and generating previously unimaginable transactions through highly-leveraged and complex derivatives - all within a virtually unregulated atmosphere that national governments couldn't manage to police. Sarkozy and his European partners hope that...