Saving International Capitalism During the Early Truman Presidency: The National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Problems, 1945-1948

The first history of the origins of the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Problems (NAC) and its role in foreign financial policy during the early Truman Presidency. It provides an integrated analysis of the NAC's efforts to implement the Bretton Woods multilateral financial system at a time of increasing Cold War tensions. Congress created the NAC in 1945, as a cabinet-level committee to coordinate the U.S. foreign lending and monetary policy and to insure that the newly created IMF and World Bank served U.S. economic interests. This study argues that the NAC, working with limited financial resources, successfully orchestrated the first phase (1945-1948) of the transition from economic bilaterism of the inter-war years to the multilateralism of the late-1950's.