Bolstering the U.S. dollar and stabilizing world trade and payments. The limited role of Bretton Woods international economic institutions from the 1960s to the 1970s

The chapter focuses on the attempt and failure during the 1960s and 1970s to stabilise the value of the dollar in exchange markets by reducing the dollar component of world money supply through a process of institutionalization of balance of payment deficit financing assistance programs to the non-oil LDCs over the course of the two decades pivoted on the role of Bretton Woods institutions. This reconstruction charts the failure of this attempt and the origins of the rampant ascendancy to centerstage in financing development assistance of Western private financial markets as it developed since the 1970s. Furthermore, it pinpoints the autonomous initiatives of the OPEC countries in promoting financial assistance to the non-oil LDCs during the 1970s as an alternative to Western development finance programs. The final aim is to chart and explain the limited contribution of the institutions of Bretton Woods in striking the balance between transnational capital flows, the dollar's stability in the international payments system, and the permanence of non-oil LDCs in the world trade and payments system over the two decades considered in this chapter.