Word: bretton
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Lend her gold and lend her goods, Much can be afforded, Christmas trees from Bretton Woods, She must be rewarded...
...Britain-the deal nobody liked. Americans resented being called Shylocks for having made the loan at quasi-commercial terms. In England, the House of Lords accepted it even more bitterly than had the House of Commons (TIME, Dec. 24). Lord Woolton called it "degradation." The loan was linked to Bretton Woods* as twin shackles on Britain's economic freedom...
Economics had made strange bedfellows; neither Empire-minded diehards nor planned-economy socialists wanted to accept a loan which would limit Britain's economic independence by tying her to the vagaries of U.S. capitalism. (On the related issue of ratification of the Bretton Woods monetary agreements, the House vote was 314 for to 50 against.) Britons who reluctantly favored the loan said that it is sound only if the U.S. maintains full employment and buys enough goods from other nations to make it safe for them to reduce trade barriers. The thoughtful London Observer...
...terms, refused the loan, these results were probable: 1) Britain would cling of necessity to closed Empire trade and blocked sterling, thus shutting off a large part of the world from the general flow of commerce; 2) Britain could scarcely participate, as the U.S. hoped she would, in the Bretton Woods plans for freeing currency exchanges and stimulating world trade; 3) currency controls and bilateral trade agreements would restore the dangerous economic warfare...
...lose the meager economic defense afforded by preference, Britons, as unschooled as the U.S. public in the loan's real meaning, were an easy mark for imperial isolationists. Chubby Tory M.P. Robert John Graham Boothby, who all along had been against the loan, against unblocking sterling, against Bretton Woods, took one look at the U.S. offer, said it would mean "dismemberment of the British Empire." He asked Britons, whose belts have been tight for six years, to tighten them further, and predicted, "We can get through in any circumstances...