All financial institutions specialize, in dimensions that may include categories of assets and liabilities, types of services offered, customer demographics, and geographic coverage. The International Monetary Fund is the only international financial institution that is universal in its...

The International Monetary Fund was designed during World War II by men whose worldview had been shaped by the Great War and the Great Depression. Their views on how the postwar international monetary system should function were also shaped by their economics training and their nationalities....

This pamphlet is an adapted and updated version of the prologue to Tearing Down Walls: The International Monetary Fund 1990-1999, by the same author. That book examines a tumultuous decade in which the IMF faced difficult challenges and took on new and expanded roles. Among these were assisting...

Two economists designed the main features of the charter of the IMF during World War II: John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. Several of those features are attributable primarily to White, including the adoption of fixed but adjustable exchange rates, the funding of operations with...

This pamphlet is an adapted and updated version of the prologue to Tearing Down Walls: The International Monetary Fund 1990-1999 , by the same author. That book examines a tumultuous decade in which the IMF faced difficult challenges and took on new and expanded roles. Among these were assisting...