Bretton Woods

The Bretton Woods system of monetary management was established in 1944 after the Bretton Woods Agreement, requiring countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into US dollars at fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold. The system also established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to countries with balance of payments deficits. The system operated successfully until August 15, 1971, when the United States ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and leading to an era of floating exchange rates.learn more on wikipedia