Business: Shock Absorbers

Two institutions such as the world has never known before were completed —in plan—last week at Bretton Woods, N.H.

The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (see U.S. AT WAR) reached an agreement on an "International Monetary Fund" and on an "International Bank for Reconstruction and Development." The Fund is simply an $8.8 billion pot into which each member nation shoves a stack of its own chips. (Since there are not enough gold chips to go around, each player in international trade—unlike poker—has to use some of his own chips, valuable only in his...

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