Bretton Woods is dead: What next?

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has publicly admitted something normally reserved for backroom discussion in the circles of Europe’s governing elite at an event honoring the 75th anniversary of Bretton Woods (the conference which created the foundations for the post WWII world order).

At the event, Le Maire stated ever-so candidly that “the Bretton Woods order has reached its limits. Unless we are able to re-invent Bretton Woods, the New Silk Road might become the New World Order”.

He went onto state that “the pillars of that order have been the International Monetary Fund and its sister institution, the World Bank since their inception at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire in 1944.”

Were a radical transformation not undertaken immediately, then Le Maire laments “Chinese standards on state and on access to public procurements, on intellectual property could become global standards”.

The finance minister’s statements reflect the growing awareness that two opposing systems operating on two conflicting sets of principles and standards are currently in conflict, where only one can succeed. Yet as much as he appears to be aware of the forces at play between two systems, Le Maire fails miserably to identify what the Bretton Woods System was meant to accomplish in the first place, or what type of “radical transformation” is needed to save Europe from the collapse of its own speculation-ridden system.

Le Maire dives so deeply out of reality that he actually believes that the radical transformation desperately needed in the west does not involve collaborating with the New Silk Road, but rather to strengthen the power of Brussels, while becoming more technocratic and more green (aka: de-industrialized, depopulated).

Seventy five years of revisionist historians largely funded by the British Roundtable/Chatham House and its American branch (The Council on Foreign Relations) have obstructed the true antiimperial nature of the founding intention of Bretton Woods and the post war order centered on the United Nations.

Where Churchill represented the unapologetic conservative proponent of the “White Man’s Burden” to exercise dominion over the “inferior” colored peoples of the earth, Keynes represented the soft cop of the Empire as a “Fabian Society Socialist” (aka: Social Engineer) from the London School of Economics. Where Churchill’s ilk preferred

mowing down their enemies with Canons, body counts and torture as seen in the Boer War or opium wars or WWI, Keynes’ Fabian methods preferred attrition and slow subversion. Either way, the result of either pathway was the same.

While many know of the racist and pro-fascist views of Sir Churchill who spoke admiringly of Mussolini and even Hitler in the early days when it was still believed that these fascists and corporatists would act as marcher lords for the financial oligarchy, but most people are unaware that Keynes also supported Hitler and despised FDR.

Lord Keynes was deployed to lead the British delegation to Bretton Woods and advance a Delphic plan that called for creating an International Clearing Union controlled by the City of London denominating all payments in a common accounting unit: the Bancor.

The Bancor would be used to measure all nations’ trade or surplus deficits- expropriating surpluses by the end of the year and taxing countries with deficits. The imposition of a “mathematical architecture” upon the physical (nonmathematical) systems of nations was the surest way to keep an invisible cage upon the earth under an ideal of “mathematical equilibrium.” The sadistic fiscal austerity demanded by mathematical economists and other technocrats in Brussels reflect the still active force of Keynes’ spirit haunting the world today.

In opposition to Keynes, FDR’s America was represented by his close ally Harry Dexter White in Bretton Woods. White (today slandered as a Soviet agent by CFR historians) fought tooth and nail to ensure that Britain would not be in the driver’s seat of the new emerging economic system or the important mechanisms of the IMF that he would go onto lead, World Bank or monetary policy more generally. White ensured the colonial economic “preference” system Britain used to maintain free trade looting across its empire was destroyed, and the pound sterling did not play a primary role in global trade. Instead a fixed exchange rate system was set up to guarantee that speculation could not run rampant over national growth strategies and the dollar (then backed by a powerful PHYSICAL economic platform) was a backbone for world trade (1).

Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the “great dream”. In the 21st century, this great dream has taken the form of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).

Matthew Ehret is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review