What’s the difference between the IMF and the World Bank? The answer goes back seven decades.
What’s the difference between the IMF and the World Bank? 5:03 PM ET Thu, 12 Oct 2017 | 04:00
The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are underway as policymakers from around the world gather in Washington to discuss the most pressing issues facing the global economy.
The IMF and the World Bank are closely linked – so close that their headquarters are across the street. So what’s the difference between the two? The answer goes back seven decades.
Both the IMF and the World Bank were conceived at the United Nations’ Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944. Top economic minds from 44 countries gathered at a hotel in New Hampshire to come up with a new framework for the international monetary system.
There was a general consensus that the old system of exchange rates and payments had failed, leading to the Great Depression, currency devaluations and the collapse of the gold standard.
«Economic cooperation was the main goal in everybody’s mind when they started to plan out the system during World War II,» said James Boughton, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and former IMF historian.
