The Economist on “The 70-Year Itch”

In The Economist this week, there is a terrific article The Bretton Woods agreements: The 70-year itch.  Highlights include:

– America learned the benefits of economic co-operation the hard way. Its failure to create institutions to help steer the world economy after the first world war exacerbated the Great Depression and paved the way for the next conflagration.

– Yet today’s pre-eminent powers seem to have forgotten this lesson.

– If John Maynard Keynes were alive, he would sigh not just at the risks in all this economic nationalism but also the huge missed opportunity. Perhaps it is time to send another group of dignitaries to New Hampshire.

The full article is at http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21606280-both-west-and-china-are-neglecting-institutions-help-keep-world-economy

The piece is similar to my Forbes column Lessons from the Summer of 1944.

The full column can be viewed at http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/06/06/lessons-from-the-summer-of-1944/