Anticipating the end of World War II, world leaders gathered in the New Hampshire town of Bretton Woods to create the financial architecture of the post-war global financial system. The three main pillars were the World Bank, the IMF (both of which were created) and the International Trade Organization (this was never built but the governing philosophy behind it eventually gave rise to the General Agreement and Trade and Tariffs (GATT), which morphed into the World Trade Organization (WTO). We’ll discuss these institutions in much more detail beginning Monday.
Here is an excerpt from a newsreel describing the meetings at Bretton Woods in 1944:
Clouds, Clocks, and Sitting at Tables 