The Economic Basis of a Durable Peace.

Notes

First edition, first impression. "Believing that a satisfactory peace settlement would require the existence of an international organization, he considered the economic role that such an organization would need to play in the post-war world. He favoured an international bank with the power to issue an international currency against which individual countries would peg their exchange rates but be able to adjust the pegs if the pursuit of high employment policies threatened persistent losses of reserves. The countries adhering to these international arrangements would have to commit themselves to multilateral free trade and payments arrangements. Hence when Keynes produced his 'clearing union' plan for the post-war international currency system, Meade proposed a complementary 'international commercial union' to restore multilateral trade and remove trade restrictions after the war. Dalton, now president of the Board of Trade in the wartime coalition government, took this up enthusiastically, and arranged for Meade to be seconded part-time to his department. The Keynes and the Meade plans formed the basis of the British contributions to the wartime Anglo-American discussions on the post-war international economic order; Meade crossed the Atlantic for the first time to take part in the talks in Washington in September-October 1943" (ODNB).