The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.
–Jose Saramago

WW1 and WW2 caused immense physical and economic destruction across Europe. The Great Depression followed and wreaked more havoc across nations, including the United States. These events rekindled a desire to create a new international body that would create a system for stabilising currency exchange rates without backing them up with gold. It further aimed to reduce the severity of balance-of-payments deficits and to eliminate the mercantilist policies that had dominated the world before. These included competitive devaluations, foreign exchange restrictions, so on and so forth. Countless multilateral discussions led to the UN Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire where is was decided that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be created to supervise the internal financial system. The framers of the Bretton Woods monetary regime hoped to promote world trade, investment and economic growth.