Quotes from Benn Steil

the Molotov walkout" was a watershed. It made it "transparently clear that Russia was not interested in European reconstruction, but in chaos.

White therefore wanted to rewrite the rules of the American monetary system to give a revamped Federal Reserve far more discretionary powers than the gold standard could accommodate, and then convince the rest of the world to help make such a new system stick internationally.

The fraying relic of the gold-exchange standard that remained at the end of the 1920s had collapsed entirely by 1934. Britain, its inspiration and foundation in the nineteenth century, abandoned it with great reluctance and bitterness in September 1931. Twenty-five nations followed in short order. The United States refused to throw in the towel until April 1933, shortly after Roosevelt took office.

President Herbert Hoover had tried to preserve the gold standard by means of trade restrictions; Roosevelt maneuvered in the other direction, moving away from multilateralism in money while trying to preserve it in trade.

The drama of the final collapse of the gold-exchange standard would poison Anglo-American relations for decades. To the British way of thinking, Britain had been ignominiously forced off gold by selfish and short-sighted American and French policies: the Americans with their abominable import tariffs, and the French with their wretched devaluations. The Americans, for their part, saw themselves as innocent victims of an odious British default.

Truman knew, Republicans would duck responsibility and attack the White House for partisan gain.