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Description
Charged Faceted Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace Adjustable 17" - 19.5" 925 SS 3mm"CHARGED AAA Gem Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace Adjustable 17" 19. 5" Sterling Silver 3mm Micro faceted Beads Plus 925 USA Grade Sterling Silver! by ZENERGY GEMS!" Important: You will receive one (1) Adjustable 17 19. 5 Inch Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace. Two are shown in the photos to show the adjustable lengths. Designed by Sonali Franke & hand made by her Father's Company! Nickel free Cadmium Free USA GRade Sterling SIlver and hypoallergenic! Mirco
"CHARGED AAA-Gem Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace Adjustable 17" - 19.5" Sterling Silver 3mm Micro-faceted Beads Plus 925 USA Grade Sterling Silver! by ZENERGY GEMS™!"
Important: You will receive one (1) Adjustable 17 - 19.5 Inch Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace. Two are shown in the photos to show the adjustable lengths.
Designed by Sonali Franke & hand-made by her Father's Company! Nickel-free Cadmium Free USA GRade Sterling SIlver and hypoallergenic!
Mirco-faceted AAA-Grade Rainbow Tourmaline Crystals!
Your Faceted Genuine Precious Crystal Gemstone Necklace have been charged or re-charged in the Arizona Sun on Selenite Heart Crystal Logs for Metaphysical Energy Healing REIKI Benefits and comes with a Selenite Pocket Puffy Heart Charging Crystal!
Note: These are for you dearly loved customers with sensitive skin!
Rainbow Tourmaline Necklace Size: Adjustable from 17 - 19.5 inches (some minor variation in length due to natural product)
Rainbow Tourmaline Weight: ~60 Carats - 12 Grams
All photos taken in direct sunlight and are Photoshop free.
Some images were taken with a 10x magnified lens to show detail and some with flash. Photos do not do it justice.
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If this beautiful little lady doesn't speak to you enough to bring her home, click the link below to see our others:
Description: I fell in love with these over a year ago and am finally able to share these with you. These are custom designed by my new friend Sonali Franke. She has grown up in the Metaphysical Crystals world with her Father having been in the business for over 40 years. Sonali started working in the business full-time at 19 (45 years young now) and has two advanced level degrees and is a licensed Gemologist. She designed these beauties herself and has allowed me to offer them to you. I hope you love them.
The are made from the best Rainbow Touramline Gemstone Crystals available. Strung on Beadalon (USA Made) poly flex wire for durability and finished with a USA Grade (Nickel & Cadmium Free) Sterling Silver Extender with a faceted teardrop. Please note Black Tourmaline of this translucent grade will often have a slightly greenish hue in certain light (you can see that in the photos).
Diana has worn one of these and loves her. She says "these are fancy enough to wear to a black-tie ball, but not too fancy to wear every day. They are VERY comfortable too!".
Lithotherapy (Stone Therapy) & Metaphysical Value of Rainbow Tourmaline (Multi-Color):*** Rainbow Tourmaline is my way of describing these that have multi-colored Tourmaline. You'll find all of the following on these. Each earing set are closely matched and some appear more like Watermelon Tourmaline with mainly Red Tourmaline and Green Tourmaline and others with others colors mixed into the earing set.
Clear Tourmaline has many of the qualities of the other tourmalines but in a more low-key manner. It is extremely beneficial for the immune system and for detoxification of the entire body. It opens the 7th chakra and is beneficial for brain, nervous system and eye disorders.
Blue Tourmaline has the same basic qualities as green, red or watermelon tourmaline. It is especially beneficial for the upper torso (face, eyes and throat) and for the entire immune system. It has a religious nature. The dark blue, indigotourmaline acts upon the 6th and 7th chakras and the lighter blue tourmalines affect, balance and open the throat chakra.It's purpose is to teach spiritual oneness.
Red Tourmaline (and pink to a lesser degree) strengthens, grounds, warms and rejuvenates the body. It unites the heart and body for love, courage, passion, energy, stamina and steadiness. It is a perfect first chakra healing stone. It can help to bring emotional balance and devotion in a down-to-earth manner. It rules both the heart and root chakra. It will help one detach from personal pain. It has been said to stimulate fertility! It is very yang in energy. Pink tourmaline is said to inspire love, spirituality and creativity and helps uncover wisdom and enhance ones willpower.
Orange Tourmaline has all of the same characteristics as red tourmaline and activates the second chakra.
Yellow Tourmaline combines the advantages of red tourmaline with green tourmaline for a help in balancing and opening the third chakra. It helps to dispel blocked and repressed emotions and teaches one to be fearless in how they move through the world. This is achieved by teaching self-confidence and a belief in a higher power.
Green Tourmaline provides a gentle kind of shielding. When used in healing, it is a potent energy for releasing blockages from the inside out, healing holes in the aura and guarding against psychic vampires. Most people feel the effects of green tourmaline either in their heart or sinuses first.
Pink-Red-Purple Tourmaline Said to inspire love, spirituality and creativity, and to give wisdom and enhance one's willpower.
Watermelon Tourmaline said to be very effective in helping one to recover from emotional problems. Also all the properties of pink & green tourmalines.
***PLEASE NOTE: Neither the FDA or any other federal agency endorses or supports any of these claims or beliefs. No scientific research has been done to substantiate these beliefs, but they have done federally financed studies on the power of faith & prayer and have proven that if you have faith & belief that you will gain healing...miracles can happen! Thankfully government agencies do not get to tell us what to believe! We do not guarantee any claims of benefit from the crystals we sell, but do guarantee their quality and your satisfaction 100%! You'll love them and they will love you back for as long as you own them.
30-day 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, Refunds & Returns: Before you leave any neutral or negative feedback, please email me. We have a 100% success rate so far at resolving all of our customers problems (all due to USPS shipping issues so far). All of our specimens are 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed for 30 days. You can take them to a mineralogist for appraisal and if you are not happy you may return them in their original condition for a refund. Shipping back to us is not included.
Free Bonuses: All ZenergyGems™ items do include a free bonus item(s) (even when not mentioned in the listing). I love to share my love of crystals, minerals, and gemstones and will pick an appropriate free bonus item whether you are a new customer or repeat customer...everybody gets free gifts when they buy from us. If you buy some rough mineral for turning into jewelry, I will likely throw in more material of a different kind. If you buy crystals, you'll get a free crystal or 3. I'm gifted/cursed with a genuine heart of love and generosity and all ZenergyGems™ customers benefit from this.
Photos: We try to supply you a view of all four sides, the top, and bottom views of the specimen. Although many sellers "forget" to include this we are including them as a full-disclosure to you...so you know exactly what you're buying. Unless otherwise stated, the above photos are all taken in direct sunlight or under GE full-spectrum lights (that most closely match sunlight) or with a standard flash. The photos do not do the specimen justice and may look differently on different computers and mobile devices depending on your personal settings. All that said, what you're buying looks much better in person than what you see here. If you love it now...you'll definitely love it when it arrives home to you. All photos are Photoshop free and accurately describe the exact item you are purchasing or one that is very similar/identical.
Combined Shipping: You get Free Standard Shipping & Tracking included in this purchase. You can combine any of our other items (so, please browse as this is the time to save money) with this order and I will discount all of the shipping on the additional items. Each additional item can be added for only $1 each. When the total weight of the order exceeds 1 lb (16 ounces) I will then ship them all together Expedited Priority Mail (2-3 Day Delivery). When you are done shopping for your "must have" additions to your crystal or mineral collection, email me and I will combine all of your items into one shipment/invoice (this is not possible for Global Shipping Program - International Customers due to eBay restrictions) and discount the shipping on any items that had additional shipping in the listing.
Shipping is our most expensive cost on our free shipping listings. So, if you like, you may send me an offer or offers for a discount on any of our auctions with shipping. Since this listing, when purchased, has the Standard Shipping included, I will likely accept any reasonable offers on other items as add-on orders.
If you would like to take advantage of the savings of combined shipping, when you are ready to check out: 'request total from seller' and I will bundle all of your items into one invoice with combined shipping (other shipping discounted). Please do not submit payment before you get your combined invoice even if you don;t know how to "request total from seller". I will automatically combine orders from the same person.
International Shipping: We use the eBay Global Shipping Program for International orders. We ship expedited to their distribution facility and they re-send the items to you based on your chosen class of shipping. We do not control how they repackage their shipments to you. They will charge you an additional shipping & handling cost. You may be responsible for customs duties on your end. Free bonus items such as the Apache Tears will be labeled as "Free Samples", so you should not have to pay customs on the free gifts I send you.
All trade marked ZenergyGems™ products are hand selected and packaged by our skilled and knowledgeable staff at ZenergyGems™ Store. The ZenergyGems™ will only guarantee the size and quality of products sold through us.
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We feel our crystals & mineral specimens are the best available anywhere, as we go that extra mile & personally hand select each and every one of our crystals directly from our importers & local Arizona suppliers for their Premium quality, great energy, one of a kind design, ultimate color variations & much more.
We pride ourselves in bringing YOU, the VERY BEST that we can!
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4.6 ★★★★★
Based on 1578 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Attending to the inmost places of our heart
Format: Paperback
Sarah Clarkson’s newest book, “Reclaiming Quiet” is a masterful journey into the heart of what it means to be quiet before the Lord. I was hooked by the foreword and by the end of the first chapter, I was thinking of numerous friends I wanted to share this book with.
We live in a noisy, attention-distracting world and it’s far too easy to get sucked into one activity after another without one thought of being still, of finding the rest and restoration that our mind, body and soul crave.
Sarah’s writing draws the reader in with the loveliest of vignettes from her life as a Vicar’s wife, mother of 4 and author.
Her writing is lyrically gorgeous-each story comes alive by her excellent word choice and vivid descriptions. She shares her struggles with OCD and really gets to the heart of what it means to find quiet in the midst of the busyness of each day.
This is not a how-to or another step-by -step book, but more of a path that will guide the reader into thoughtful pondering of what it means to be still -to make time to sit quietly and commune with our Creator. A favorite quote from her book:
“One of the great gifts that comes to us when we choose to step away from the chorus and listen to the Holy Spirit, is a capacity for conviction and courage. We need to attend in the inmost places of our hearts, where God speaks…We need to listen from the inside.”
Reclaiming Quiet would make an excellent book club selection for a small group or to explore on your own-you won’t be disappointed. I can see this becoming a bestseller.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2024
★★★★★ 5
American Bullies at Bretton Woods
Format: Hardcover
There, I said it, and I am an American.
I had heard of the conference but never read about it, and certainly had never heard of Harry Dexter White, but this book goes to great length to explain what happened in this important meeting as World War II was drawing to a close and a plan needed to be developed for a new world order regarding the flows of money to facilitate trade and avoid economic disruptions that the world had seen far too much of.
Steil presents more information on John Maynard Keynes than his American antithesis, Harry Dexter White, and for good reason. Keynes was simply one of the most, if not the most, brilliant intellectuals of the 20th century. His theories of economics were evolving through his life, but he is most remembered for his idea that government stimulus could help alleviate a faltering economy when the private sector failed to do the job, and he was opposed as he said to the "gold cage" that for years had been the standard of international finance. He had a biting wit, coupled with a superior intelligence that far outshone his meager appearance (he was ugly, and knew it) but he was cast in the role of a diplomat to present the case for England as the world entered the post war period.
The problem was that England was broke. She had endured two world wars in the space of 30 years and the empire was begging for funds from Washington, and most of her debt to the US from the Great War was still unpaid. She also had an enemy in FDR, who was determined that the imperial preference of England after the war was to be no more. Her crown jewel, India, was pressing for independence and the empire was in the process of unwinding, as was the strength of the British sterling. Keynes pressed to have the new institutions of the World Bank and the IMF located in London, and the Americans under the leadership of White simply said "hell no."
Enter Harry Dexter White. The name is as deceptive as the individual. He was a son of Jewish immigrants, graduating from Harvard late in life, but brilliant in his intellect and determined that America would rule by the strenght of the dollar and Britain was to be no more as a world power. It was interesting to me to see the Treasury Department so powerful over this whole thing. You may think that the Department of State would have more of an influence because these were important global decisions, but their input was minimal. Regardless, White was a Soviet sympathizer and was just in the process of getting raked over the coals when he died early after the war from a heart attack. Keynes also died at the age of 62, not long after the war. The world remember Keynes and White is more of a footnote. I personally did not like White. He reminded me of a Himmler with his rim glasses and nasty litte mustache. As for his boss, Henry Morganthau, Secretary of Treasury, he was little better. His idiotic plan to strip Germany of all industrial capability after the war and turn it into a nation of small farms was leaked to the press and Goebbels made hay of it, likely resulting in many more American casualities toward the end of the war. Just goes to show that FDR used some strange people in his administration. Thank God his selection of generals was far better.
America was brutal toward the British at Bretton Woods. We often think of the English speaking peoples uniting and working together in true harmony to defeat the fascist nations. That is a myth and this book helps bust it. It shows to me how inhuman America was to our British allies, who bore much of the battle of this war alone, with little hope of survival. It is said that when Winston Churchill learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he knew that England would win the war and when he retired, he slept like a baby. Little did he know that the selfishness of the U.S. government would put a boot on the neck of England after the war. Churchill once said that the Germans were either at your throat or under your foot. The later part of that pertains to the American response to England toward the end of the war and after.
A good book. Great information, and highly recommended.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2013
★★★★★ 4
Easy read on Difficult subject
Format: Kindle
This well-documented book explodes the myth of Bretton Woods. The battle between Harry White and John Maynard Keynes turns out to have been contrived.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2026
★★★★★ 5
A great book for anyone interested in US foreign policy, history, or economics
Format: Hardcover
In July of 1944 representatives from forty-four nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH to establish the rules for the post World War II international monetary system. Although nations from around the globe were at the table, the primary debate was between the United States and Great Britain. The U.S. was determined to advance a policy ensuring the dollar reigned supreme in world trade, thus guaranteeing American dominance. The British were holding out for a monetary system that would not relegate them to a secondary status after the war. Representing the two great nations were two men. For the U.S. it was a little-known economist working as an assistant to the Secretary of Treasury, Harry Dexter White, and representing the British was world-known economist John Maynard Keynes. Benn Steil examines the Bretton Woods conference, and the inter-war years leading up to it, using these two men as a backdrop. Not only is the work well researched, but as a senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, Steil is eminently qualified to make economic judgements. Steil’s thoroughness and expertise combine to make an enjoyable read of what could otherwise be an exceptionally dry topic. The main argument Steil makes is that the dominance of dollar in the post WWII economy was a fait accompli at Bretton Woods.
Mr. Steil introduces the reader to the relatively unknown Harry Dexter White, a minor player at the U.S. Treasury commanding great influence. Steil shows the reader that going into Bretton Woods, White and his boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, were committed to bringing President Roosevelt’s New Deal to the rest of the world. Part of this plan was to shift power not only from London, but from Wall Street as well, to the U.S. Treasury. White was convinced international banking had played a key role in creating the instability responsible for WWII. A new gold standard tied to the U.S. dollar would ensure stability in White’s view. Ultimately White’s ideas led to the creation of “the three so-called Bretton Woods institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank” (Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods, 127). Adding intrigue to economics Steil also shows through declassified F.B.I. documents and recently discovered writings by White, that White was an agent of the Soviet Union.
Keynes is often regarded as “the first-ever international celebrity economist” (Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods, 3). While this may be true, he was no match for the little-known White. White (and Morgenthau) considered the British a threat on the economic stage and made sure their Lend-Lease terms would bankrupt the U.K. by the end of the war and bring them to the bargaining table.
As well as being an interesting historical read, and a useful primer on international monetary policy, Steil captures the importance of economic policy in relation to foreign policy. Morgenthau and White realized the power of the U.S. to inflict its will upon other nations was rooted in the power of the dollar. Today as then, U.S. power flows from the economy. Students of modern U.S. foreign policy would be wise to have a basic understanding of U.S. economic policy and how the U.S. economy interacts in the global system.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2020
★★★★★ 5
Hosting Diplomatic Conferences 101: The Case of Bretton Woods
Format: Paperback
Bretton Woods was the most important international gathering since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. I read this book looking for clues on how to host international conferences: how to accommodate delegates, maintain protocol, overcome obstacles, build consensus, and reach a satisfying outcome. I was disappointed on that count. The Battle of Bretton Woods doesn’t focus on the Bretton Woods conference per se. It is a work of intellectual history built around the two characters of John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. It describes the way these two Treasury officials negotiated the main financial issues facing the United States and the United Kingdom during World War II and immediately after: the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 granting the British access to war finance and equipment; the blueprints for a postwar monetary order that began circulating in 1942 and ultimately culminated in the adoption of the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development at Bretton Woods; the signing of the $4.4 billion Anglo-American Financial Agreement in December 1945; and the inaugural meeting of the IMF board of governors in Savannah, Georgia, on March 8, 1946. It mixes these elements of diplomatic history with personal aspects of the lives of the two main characters: Keynes’s inflated ego and lack of diplomatic acumen that resulted in missed opportunities for Great Britain; and White’s dual personality as the braintrust of the US Treasury and as a mole operating clandestinely for the Soviets.
To be sure, there are some useful indications on the Bretton Woods conference itself. It took place in the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, a luxury resort with striking views of the White Mountains. The organization itself was a mess: “everything is in a state of glorious confusion,” commented British economist Lionel Robbins, who added: “with all their virtues as technicians—and these are very great—the Americans are not good organizers of international conferences.” The conference took place in war time, and army bus and personnel brought the delegates in and out. Delegates were thrown out of the hotel on July 23 for fear they would reopen the discussion and have a closer look at the hastily agreed texts. The location itself owed a lot to domestic politics. US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wanted to court a local politician for future support of the agreement in the Senate, remembering the disastrous defeat of Wilson’s League of Nations in Congress after World War I. The press was also in attendance, and Bretton Woods became one of the first international conferences to be covered live by the media. Most of the delegates came from Ministries of Finance or central banks, and true diplomats—the ones hailing from Ministries of Foreign Affairs—were a rare occurrence. The US Treasury Department had willingly kept the State Department out of the loop, and considered the only senior diplomat present, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, as “one of them”.
The conference was only the tip of the iceberg: everything was set in advance, during the two years when plans were circulated and drafts were discussed. The invitations were sent to forty-four nations, but the United States ran the show from start to finish, and even British delegates were relegated to a secondary role. Keynes, who had termed the Reconstruction Bank scheme imagined by White “the work of a lunatic,…some sort of bad joke,” was named chairman of the commission that drafted the Bank’s Articles of Agreement, while White himself dealt with the much more significant IMF. As for other nations, their input was limited to discussing the national quotas that would measure their relative power and influence at the boards of the two institutions or, in the case of the Cubans, to “providing the cigars”. White’s goal was to “channel the energy, aims, ambitions, and vanities of the mass of delegates into meaningless debate.” As an American organizer wily remarked, “there should be just one general rule: that anybody can talk as long as he pleases, provided he doesn’t say anything.” To make things even safer, the session secretaries were all Americans, appointed by White, and it was they who wrote the official minutes of the committees. Some important remarks made during sessions disappeared from the draft minutes, while crucial provisions were introduced surreptitiously in the final text versions. As an example, White’s technicians strategically replaced “gold” with “gold and dollars” in the paper describing the foundations of the postwar monetary order, a crucial modification that Keynes discovered only after his departure from Bretton Woods.
The result was, in Keynes’s words, “the most monstrous monkey-house assembled for years.” The distinguished Cambridge don liked that expression, and indeed often referred to non-Anglo-saxons as monkeys, with a special mention to the French which he utterly despised. But the monkey-king in this diplomatic jungle was certainly Keynes himself. Long before Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty, Keynes was the first-ever international celebrity economist. He was surrounded by an aura of awe and admiration, and the printed media craved for his every declarations. In Benn Steil’s rendering, he had “an effortless facility with words that might have made him a master diplomat, had he actually been more concerned with convincing opponents than with cornering them logically and humiliating them.” “The man is a menace for international relations,” remarked fellow British economist James Meade, who nonetheless revered him. He would make aggressive jokes on lawyers in front of American lawyers, show his contempt for other delegates by displaying his immense intellectual superiority, and try to steal the show by pretending the outcomes of negotiations were all due to his influence while in fact they ran counter to his prescriptions. His last speech in Savannah, where he metaphorically summoned spirits and fairies to bestow the newborn institutions with their gifts, was taken as a personal attack by the American delegate: “I do mind being called a fairy,” he muttered to his aide.
If a statesman is to be judged by his capacity to serve the national interest, Keynes failed miserably in his attempt at statesmanship. This is not to say that he didn’t have Britain’s interest in mind. His visionary monetary schemes notwithstanding, he had ultimately come to the United States with the mission of conserving what he could of bankrupt Britain’s historic imperial prerogatives. As Schumpeter wrote, “Keynes’s advice was in the first instance always English advice, born of English problems.” Keynes was thoroughly British, and it was the British problems of his day that drove his theorizing: problems of deflation and depression, paying for war and surviving the perilous transition to peace. He had spent his career thinking about monetary issues as a way to preserve his country’s clout in the world. In particular, the shift of financial power from London to New York was a matter of constant concern for him. But he lacked the basic insight that the Americans did not share British national interests, and that they could even be rival powers on the international scene. Throughout the war, Keynes continuously overestimated American sympathies with Britain and underestimated the importance of public and congressional resistance to US aid or involvement. He thought of Bretton Woods as a battle of ideas, counting on his immense intellectual superiority to carry the day, whereas it was first and foremost a battle of power and influence, with the United States as the clear winner.
Indeed, British and American interests were not identical, however much both peoples were dedicated to destroying Nazism. Henry White had a clear goal in Bretton Woods: to entrench the dollar as the world’s currency, and to make it “as good as gold”. He used the leverage provided by the Lend-Lease agreement and Britain’s quasi-bankrupt situation in order to put a permanent end to the pound sterling’s international role. This required dismantling the structural supports of the British empire. In particular, Americans sought to put an end to “imperial preference”, by which Britain secured privileged trade access to the markets of its colonies and dominions. There was no room in the new order for the remnants of British imperial glory: the postwar world needed to be grounded in nondiscriminatory multilateral trade and full monetary convertibility. The Americans never deviated from their hard-line geopolitical terms. Many held no particular sympathy for the British, who had “shamefully walked away from their Great War debt obligations,” and who were trying to extend their Empire’s lease of life by credit. At Bretton Woods, we see American power in full swing, and in particular the role of the US Treasury as the economic arm of American foreign policy.
Contrary to the myth, Bretton Woods did not provide the economic foundation for postwar prosperity and monetary stability. And it was not the cooperative, disinterested, forward-looking endeavor that people often have in mind when they stress the need for a new Bretton Woods. The Bretton Woods system didn’t work the way it was supposed to. It was effective for only a brief period, and then not for the reason its authors had envisaged. It was not until 1961, fifteen years after the IMF was inaugurated, that the first nine European countries formally adopted the required provisions that their currencies be convertible into dollars. Even then, Bretton Woods was an ineffective and crisis-prone monetary system. It began experiencing potentially fatal difficulties as early as the late 1950s, and was only kept alive by a series of political fixes that made little long-term, macroeconomic sense. It could never have survived the globalization of finance and the removal of capital controls that began to take place in the 1970s. Indeed, it can be argued that the system was doomed the moment that it came into existence, and that the Bretton Woods agreements contained fatal flaws that could only lead to the abandon of gold convertibility.
Not only was Bretton Woods a crisis-prone, unstable system: it was also a bad deal for Great Britain and, one could argue, for the United States and for the world as well. What Britain actually needed in 1944-45 was short-term financing at reasonable cost with few geopolitical strings attached, and possibly a lower exchange rate. There was evident hubris in the attempt to design a global monetary system, to be managed by an international body, at a time when the outcome of the war was not yet clear. Keynes and White’s ambition was to create “a New Deal for a new world,” but they lacked the political legitimacy and also the effective means to achieve such a grand plan. Another course of action was possible for the United Kingdom, one suggested by a British Treasury official after the facts: postpone the “Grand Design” negotiations, avoid irreversible decisions, try to buy time until you see how the new postwar world develops, and borrow your way out of the crisis by getting a commercial loan from Wall Street. Who at Bretton Woods would have thought that the British empire would unravel, the United States and the Soviet Union turn into arch-enemies, and the world divide into hostile camps just two years after the conference? There was no necessity to conclude Bretton Woods in a haste. Waiting for the San Francisco conference to address the issue of money and finance jointly with the creation of the United Nations would have made the postwar institutional framework more coherent. The world would have avoided the dichotomy between the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington and the United Nations in New York, in which both seem to live on completely different planes.
So are there practical lessons from Bretton Woods for statesmen and diplomats hosting international meetings, such as the Paris Conference on Climate Change that will take place in end-November and December 2015? First, as the previous attempt to tackle climate change at Copenhagen taught us, the summit itself is not the place where comprehensive negotiations should take place. Most items on the agenda should be solved beforehand, in preparatory meetings among experts or in a pre-summit rehearsal such as the UN General Assembly in New York. Second, organizers should make sure they keep a bone for the leaders and national delegates to chew, one that is easy enough to grasp and with a clear payoff in terms of national interest, such as the quota issue at Bretton Woods. Managing expectations and egos will always be a tricky issue, but one that diplomats are best equipped to handle. How to deal with the media is also a key issue, particularly in our age of instant communication and world broadcasting. Lastly, a modicum of modesty should be in order: the world is not going to be saved by international conferences, however successful they turn out to be. For Britain in 1944 and for the planet as a whole in 2015, buying time is always a sensible option.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2015
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Gun Case Lock TSA Approved Locks for Gun Case,Cut-Proof Padlock for Guns/Rifles/Hard Pistol Cases/Firearms/Handguns/Revolvers/Camera/Drone/Equipments/Instruments/Tools Protective Hard Cases(Black)
15.29
Talonport Keyless Luggage Locks TSA Approved, No Combination Needed, Lifetime Card Keys, Durable Metal Suitcase Lock for Travel Essentials & Checked Bags (Blue) (2 Pack)
28.49
Forge TSA Approved Luggage Locks Ultra-Secure Dimple TSA006 Key Travel Locks with Zinc Alloy Body- Black 2 Cable Locks
21.00
LAFENLIN 2-Pack Gun Case Locks, TSA Approved 3-Digit Heavy Duty Padlocks for Secure Air Travel & Home Storage, Fits Gun, Rifle, Handgun, Shotgun & Pistol Cases, Black
27.99
Hero Luggage Lock (Pack of 2) TSA Approved, 4 Digit Combination Padlock for Travel, Suitcases, Lockers, Backpacks
29.00