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How well can it be argued that the Bretton-Woods system was the most successful monetary system in history?
Say that we take an endogenous money view on the role of credit, thus viewing a rising level of private debt in aggregate over time as an unambiguously bad thing. Most of the rise in private debt in OECD economies took place after the relinquishment of Bretton-Woods. Also, much of the time after Bretton-Woods' cancellation was plagued by conditions of high inflation (1971-1983) and/or asset market volatility and financial crisis (2000-2008) and the brief "great moderation" period in between saw the steepest deterioration of private sector balance sheets in post-war history. Worker compensation also began to disconnect from productivity growth right around 1971. The 1945 to 1970 period saw both higher economic growth in OECD countries and fewer problems of these kinds. The most successful part of the current monetary system is actually something that mimics the fixed exchange rate system: the implicit and explicit currency pegs of exporting nations. What's to keep us from stating plainly that Bretton-Woods was a better monetary system than the current fully fiat, floating exchange rate based system?
We can also compare BW to the gold standard system before the wars, but I think it would be a difficult comparison because the world looked different in a lot of ways back then.
Say that we take an endogenous money view on the role of credit, thus viewing a rising level of private debt in aggregate over time as an unambiguously bad thing. Most of the rise in private debt in OECD economies took place after the relinquishment of Bretton-Woods. Also, much of the time after Bretton-Woods' cancellation was plagued by conditions of high inflation (1971-1983) and/or asset market volatility and financial crisis (2000-2008) and the brief "great moderation" period in between saw the steepest deterioration of private sector balance sheets in post-war history. Worker compensation also began to disconnect from productivity growth right around 1971. The 1945 to 1970 period saw both higher economic growth in OECD countries and fewer problems of these kinds. The most successful part of the current monetary system is actually something that mimics the fixed exchange rate system: the implicit and explicit currency pegs of exporting nations. What's to keep us from stating plainly that Bretton-Woods was a better monetary system than the current fully fiat, floating exchange rate based system?
We can also compare BW to the gold standard system before the wars, but I think it would be a difficult comparison because the world looked different in a lot of ways back then.