US aid was tied to strict conditions ensuring the opening up of trade with the British colonies. Perhaps the biggest immediate US inroads into British domination were in Middle East oil output; the American share doubled to 31 percent between 1939 and 1946, and went up another 60 percent by 1953.
The Bretton Woods agreements must be seen in this general context: they were intended to make the post-war world safe for (American) capitalism.
The new global convertible currency was to be the dollar, pegged to gold at the rate of $44 to the ounce - an arrangement that lasted until 1971. Exchange. rates were to be monitored by a new body, the International Monetary Fund, which was to intervene where necessary to stabilise crisis situations.
However the IMF never had the $26 billion resources originally proposed: after vigorous US resistance it was launched with just $9 billion and very restricted terms of reference.
The World Bank was even more hobbled by US policy. Early plans had called for a 'Bank of Reconstruction of the United and Associated Nations', with capital of $10 billion in gold and currencies and additional borrowing powers.
_FAULOURBut conservative voices in the US establishment whittled this down to a fraction of the original resources: in the event it set up with just $750m. It did not lend $1 billion until 1953.
In recent years the World Bank has become a by-word for huge and environmentally-damaging "development' projects in the Third World that have led to further oppression, repression and deforestation.
Still pursuing the expansion of world trade, to exploit its dominance in productive industry, the US pushed for reductions in import tariffs, which in 1947 took shape in the first GATT agreement.
A year later, in the face of consolidating Stalinist control over much of Eastern Europe, a new Cold War economic bloc was formed, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Dominant
These institutions have continued to dominate the economic development of the world for 50 years. Despite the political changes that have seen dozens of new independent states emerge and others transformed by rapid industrialisation, the control of the Bretton Woods institutions has not changed.
Today, the 24 OECD countries currently control more than two thirds of the votes at the World Bank, and 55 percent at the IMF.
Of more than 150 IMF member contries, just five (USA, Britain, Germany, France and Japan) control 44 percent of votes. The oil- rich OPEC countries con$404 $62 SOCIALIST OUTLONK * ge 9