With the founding of the United Nations after World War II, representatives of 44 nations met in conference at Bretton Woods, N.H., in July 1944, to form the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is a specialized agency affiliated with the United Nations, designed to stabilize international monetary exchange rates instead of the gold standard. It has no power to dictate national monetary policies.
The members of the IMF, it was decided, would all deposit quotas in the fund, only one-quarter of which had to be in gold, and the rest in their own currencies. From this fund, members could purchase with their own national currencies the gold or foreign exchange they needed.
The IMF, then, became the world’s largest source of quickly available international credit. By June 1972, the 124-nation fund had provided $24.6 billion in short-term financial assistance.
