Nel ferragosto 1971 il presidente americano Richard Nixon decide di mettere fine al sistema di cambio che ha governato il mercato mondiale dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale e sceglie di abbandonare definitivamente la parità tra dollaro e oro sancita nel 1944 dagli accordi di Bretton Woods, cittadina del New Hampshire che ospitò la Conferenza finanziaria internazionale. Il crollo del sistema di cambi fissi fu un trauma per l’economia internazionale, fino ad allora regolata rigidamente in base ad un “liberismo controllato”, fatto di regole e procedure concordate tra i paesi, e da allora in poi dominata invece solo dal mercato e dalle sue esigenze. Da quel ferragosto la faccia dell’economia mondiale cambiò radicalmente: la decisione di Nixon fu una vera rivoluzione che ha rafforzato il ruolo degli Stati Uniti nell’economia globale, ponendo le condizioni, o le premesse, per la loro supremazia economica a livello internazionale.
Dopo 35 anni dal crollo di Bretton Woods, Duccio Basosi realizza questo libro sulla svolta economica epocale che dimostra in particolare come la decisione di Nixon, per molti storici inconsapevole e inevitabile, fu invece ragionata e deliberata. Sottolinea quindi l’irritazione degli europei di fronte all’abbandono di Bretton Woods: per rispondere a quello che percepiscono come un “sopruso”, l’Europa cercherà di organizzarsi già da allora per costruire una comune valuta, ma soprattutto un forte blocco monetario; mentre gli Usa, dall’altra parte, mineranno sistematicamente i tentativi europei di arrivare a una sufficiente stabilità.
Formato PDF
The end of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the years between 1971 and 1973 was an historic event that changed the economic landscape of the entire non-soviet world. It has often been argued that the crisis of Bretton Woods monetary system was by some means a linear process, when the inner weaknesses of the arrangements devised in 1944 - fixed exchange rates, gold-dollar standard – ultimately overwhelmed the ability of the participants to keep the system alive. Some scholars have attributed particular responsibilities for the breakdown of Bretton Woods to the Nixon administration in the US, often seen as not sufficiently interested in international economic affairs to avoid the system’s collapse, thereby creating the conditions for the economic disorder of the early 1970s. The records of the three secretaries that served in the US Treasury under the Nixon administration (Kennedy, Connally and Shultz) and the files of their undersecretary for Monetary Affairs (Volcker), on which Basosi’s research is based (as well as on White House, NSC, Federal Reserve and State Department records), allow us to see things in a different light. From the very beginning of its term in office, the Nixon administration included the need for a different international monetary system in the broad process of reshaping the US foreign policy, that would take the forms of the Nixon Doctrine, Détente, and the opening to China. US economic and political exigencies called for a "flexible" system based on the dollar, intended to serve the trends toward growing transnational investments by US companies and banks, as well as the perceived need of a diminished financial constraint on overseas military commitments. However implicitly, and with a trial and error process concerning implementation, this entailed a de facto new conception of US hegemony, as well as a serious clash of interests with the European allies in particular. As European plans, to create their own shield against monetary instability, took on growing credibility throughout 1970 with the launching of the EMU and the Werner plan, US policymakers moved towards the unilateral suspension of their commitment to Bretton Woods. This came on 15 August 1971, after months of deep internal debate within the administration, involving both economic and geopolitical reflections. The second half of 1971, as well as the year 1972, marked the beginning of a different phase. The US administration proceeded quite ruthlessly in the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system, sometimes actually using global financial instability to secure its objectives. A new conception of global American power was taking shape and, for what concerns the Transatlantic relationship, a clearer definition of western hierarchies de facto replaced the idealistic visions of the "partnership" of the 1960s.
PDF format
Polistampa, 2006
Pagine: 254
Caratteristiche: br.
Formato: 17x24
ISBN: 978-88-596-0093-0
Collana:
Storia delle relazioni internazionali, 11
Settori: