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In early July 1944, delegates from 44 countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. A three-week summit took place, at which a new system was agreed to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the Second World War. The U.S. was already the world’s commercial powerhouse, having eclipsed the …

For more than one hundred years, governments have been trying to kill gold’s role in the monetary system. They’ve dreamed of a day when the cursed metal would vanish completely except as jewelry and luxurious adornment. And yet its monetary properties won’t go away. Central banks still hold it, and many have increased their gold …