Acordos de Bretton Woods: diferenças entre revisões
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Financiador e conselheiro autoindicado de presidentes e congressistas, [[Bernard Baruch]] resumiu o espírito de Bretton Wood no início de 1945: se pudermos "eliminar o subsídio ao trabalho e à competição acirrada nos mercados exportadores," bem como prevenir a reconstrução de máquinas de guerra, "''oh boy, oh boy'', que prosperidade a longo termo nós teremos."<ref>Baruch to E. Coblentz, 23 de março de 1945, Papers of Bernard Baruch, Princeton University Library, Princeton, N.J quoted in Walter LaFeber, Russia, America, and the Cold War (New York, 2002), p.12.</ref> Assim, os Estados Unidos vão usar sua posição predominante para restaurar uma economia mundial aberta, unificada sob controle dos EUA, que deu aos EUA acesso ilimitado a mercados e matéria-prima.
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====Devastação do tempo de guerra da Europa e do Japão====
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Antes da guerra, os franceses e britânicos estavam percebendo que eles não poderiam mais competir com a indústria dos EUA em um mercado aberto. Durante os anos 1930, os britânicos criaram o próprio bloco econômicos para impedir a entrada de produtos dos EUA. Churchill não acreditada que ele poderia render aquela proteção depois da guerra, então ele diluiu a cláusula do Tratado Atlântico de livre acesso antes de concordar com isso.
Contudo, oficiais norte-americanos estavam determinados a abrir o império. O comércio dos E.U.A e britânico compunham, à época, mais da metade do comércio mundial. Caso houvesse uma ruptura do bloco britânico os E.U.A estariam bem encaminhados no sentido de abrir o mercado mundial. Assim como o século dezenove foi dominado economicamente pelos britânicos, a segunda metade do século vinte instauraria uma hegemonia norte-americana.
Yet, U.S. officials were determined to break open the empire. Combined, British and U.S. trade accounted for well over half the world's exchange of goods. If the British bloc could be split apart, the U.S. would be well on its way to opening the entire global marketplace. But as the nineteenth century had been economically dominated by Britain, the second half of the twentieth was to be one of U.S. hegemony.
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====The Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates====
The Bretton Woods system sought to secure the advantages of the gold standard without its disadvantages. Thus, a compromise was sought between the polar alternatives of either freely floating or irrevocably fixed rates—an arrangement that might gain the advantages of both without suffering the disadvantages of either while retaining the right to revise currency values on occasion as circumstances warranted.
The rules of Bretton Woods, set forth in the articles of agreement of the IMF and the International
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Keynes' proposals would have established a world reserve currency administered by a central bank (which he thought might be called "bancor") vested with the possibility of creating money and with the authority to take actions on a much larger scale (understandable considering deflationary problems in Britain at the time).
In case of balance of payments imbalances, Keynes recommended that ''both'' debtors and creditors should change their policies. As outlined by Keynes, countries with payment surpluses should increase their imports from the deficit countries and thereby create a foreign trade equilibrium. Thus, Keynes was sensitive to the problem that placing too much of the burden on the deficit country would be deflationary.
But the U.S., as a likely creditor nation, and eager to take on the role of the world's economic powerhouse, balked at Keynes' plan and did not pay serious attention to it. The U.S. contingent was too concerned about [[inflation]]ary pressures in the postwar economy, and White saw an imbalance as a problem only of the deficit country.
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The modest credit facilities of the IMF were clearly insufficient to deal with Western Europe's huge balance of payments deficits. The problem was further aggravated by the reaffirmation by the IMF Board of Governors in the provision in the Bretton Woods Articles of Agreement that the IMF could make loans only for current account deficits and not for capital and reconstruction purposes. Only the United States contribution of $570 million was actually available for IBRD lending. In addition, because the only available market for IBRD bonds was the conservative [[Wall Street]] banking market, the IBRD was forced to adopt a conservative lending policy, granting loans only when repayment was assured. Given these problems, by 1947 the IMF and the IBRD themselves were admitting that they could not deal with the international monetary system's economic problems.<sup>[[#Notas_e_referências|6]]</sup>
Thus, the much looser [[Marshall Plan]]—the European Recovery Program—was set up to provide U.S. finance to rebuild Europe largely through grants rather than loans. The Marshall Plan was the program of massive economic aid given by the United States to favored countries in Western Europe for the rebuilding of capitalism. In a speech to Congress on [[June 5]], [[1946]], U.S. Secretary of State [[George Marshall]] stated:
<blockquote>The breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete. ... Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products... principally from the United States... are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial help or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.<sup>[[#Notes|7]]</sup></blockquote>
From [[1947]] until [[1958]], the United States deliberately encouraged an outflow of dollars, and, from 1950 on, the United States ran a balance of payments deficit with the intent of providing liquidity for the international economy. Dollars flowed out through various U.S. aid programs: the [[Truman Doctrine]] entailing aid to the pro-U.S. [[Greece|Greek]] and [[Turkey|Turkish]] regimes, which were struggling to suppress socialist revolution, aid to various pro-U.S. regimes in the Third World, and most important, the Marshall Plan. From [[1948]] to [[1954]] the United States gave sixteen Western European countries $17 billion in outright grants.
To encourage long-term adjustment, the United States promoted European and Japanese trade competitiveness. Policies for economic controls on the defeated former [[Axis Powers|Axis]] countries were scrapped. Aid to Europe and Japan was designed to rebuild productive and export capacity. In the long run it was expected that such European and Japanese recovery would benefit the United States by widening markets for U.S. exports, and providing locations for U.S. capital expansion.
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In [[1967]] there was an attack on the pound, and a run on gold in the "sterling area," and on [[November 17]], [[1967]], the British government was forced to devalue the pound. U.S. President [[Lyndon Baines Johnson]] was faced with a brutal choice, either he could institute protectionist measures, including travel taxes, export subsidies and slashing the budget - or he could accept the risk of a "run on gold" and the dollar. From Johnson's perspective: "The world supply of gold is insufficient to make the present system workable—particularly as the use of the dollar as a reserve currency is essential to create the required international liquidity to sustain world trade and growth." He believed that the priorities of the United States were correct, and that, while there were internal tensions in the Western alliance, that turning away from open trade would be more costly, economically and politically, than it was worth: "Our role of world leadership in a political and military sense is the only reason for our current embarrassment in an economic sense on the one hand and on the other the correction of the economic embarrassment under present monetary systems will result in an untenable position economically for our allies."
While [[West Germany]] agreed not to purchase gold from the U.S., and agreed to hold dollars instead, the pressure on both the Dollar and the Pound Sterling continued. In [[January]] [[1968]] Johnson imposed a series of measures designed to end gold outflow, and to increase American exports. However, to no avail: on [[March 17]], [[1968]], there was a run on gold, the London Gold Pool was dissolved, and a series of meetings began to rescue or reform the system as it existed. However, as long as the U.S. commitments to foreign deployment continued, particularly to Western Europe, there was little that could be done to maintain the gold peg.
The attempt to maintain that peg collapsed in [[November]] [[1968]], and a new policy program was attempted: to convert Bretton Woods to a system where the enforcement mechanism floated by some means, which would be set by either fiat, or by a restriction to honor foreign accounts.
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====The decline of U.S. hegemony====
A second structural change that undermined monetary management was the decline of U.S. hegemony. The U.S. was no longer the dominant economic power it had been for almost two decades. By the mid-1960s Europe and Japan had become international economic powers in their own right. With total reserves exceeding those of the U.S., with higher levels of growth and trade, and with per capita income approaching that of the U.S., Europe and Japan were narrowing the gap between themselves and the United States.
The shift toward a more pluralistic distribution of economic power led to increasing dissatisfaction with the privileged role of the U.S. dollar as the international currency. As in effect the world's central banker, the U.S., through its deficit, determined the level of international liquidity. In an increasingly interdependent world, U.S. policy greatly influenced economic conditions in Europe and Japan. In addition, as long as other countries were willing to hold dollars, the U.S. could carry out massive foreign expenditures for political purposes—military activities and foreign aid—without the threat of balance-of-payments constraints.
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Reinforcing the relative decline in U.S. power and the dissatisfaction of Europe and Japan with the system was the continuing decline of the dollar—the foundation that had underpinned the post-1945 global trading system. The [[Vietnam War]] and the refusal of the administration of U.S. President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] to pay for it and its [[Great Society]] programs through taxation resulted in an increased dollar outflow to pay for the military expenditures and rampant inflation, which led to the deterioration of the U.S. balance of trade position. In the late 1960s, the dollar was overvalued with its current trading position, while the [[deutschmark]] and the [[yen]] were undervalued; and, naturally, the Germans and the Japanese had no desire to revalue and thereby make their exports more expensive, whereas the U.S. sought to maintain its international credibility by avoiding devaluation. Meanwhile, the pressure on government reserves was intensified by the new international currency markets, with their vast pools of speculative capital moving around in search of quick profits.
In contrast, upon the creation of Bretton Woods, with the U.S. producing half of the world's manufactured goods and holding half its reserves, the twin burdens of international management and the Cold War were possible to meet at first. Throughout the 1950s Washington sustained a balance of payments deficit in order to finance loans, aid, and troops for allied regimes. But during the 1960s the costs of doing so became less tolerable. By 1970 the United States held under 16 percent of international reserves. Adjustment to these changed realities was impeded by the U.S. commitment to fixed exchange rates and by the U.S. obligation to convert dollars into gold on demand.
In sum, monetary interdependence was increasing at a faster pace than international management in the 1960s, leading up to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. New problems created by interdependence, including huge capital flows, placed stresses on the fixed exchange rate system and impeded national economic management. Amid these problems, economic cooperation decreased, and U.S. leadership declined, and eventually broke down.
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[[Ficheiro:Nixongoldwindow.jpg|frame|President Nixon announces that the U.S. will stop redeeming dollars for gold.]]
By the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War accelerated inflation, the United States was running not just a balance of payments deficit but also a trade deficit (for the first time in the twentieth century). The crucial turning point was 1970, which saw U.S. gold coverage deteriorate from 55% to 22%. This, in the view of [[Neoclassical economics|neoclassical economists]], represented the point where holders of the dollar had lost faith in the U.S. ability to cut its budget and trade deficits.
In 1971 more and more dollars were being printed in Washington, then being pumped overseas, to pay for the nation's military expenditures and private investments. In the first six months of 1971, assets for $22 billion fled the United States. In response, on [[August 15]], [[1971]], without consulting members of the international monetary system or his own State Department, Nixon unilaterally imposed 90 day wage and price controls, a 10 % import surcharge, and most importantly "closed(ing) the gold window," making the dollar inconvertible to gold directly, except on the open market.
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==Ver também==
* [[Padrão-ouro]]
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* [[Demetrio Magnoli|MAGNOLI, Demetrio]]. ''História da Paz''. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2008. 448p. ISBN 85-7244-396-7
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