In 1944, representatives from forty-four nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to make financial arrangements for the postwar world. It was then that the plans for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were created, with the General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs created two years later. This newly designed global trading system worked more or less well for about half a century. But as that era's commodity-based manufacturing system evolved into today's specialized innovation economy, the strains on the Bretton Woods framework have become pronounced.
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