Seventy-five years ago, as the second world war was drawing to a close, delegates from the Allied nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create a framework for regulating the international monetary system.
They assumed back then that monitoring money was crucial for fostering peace and building growth. No surprise there, perhaps: after the war there was an urgent need to restart the global economy, via institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And, for all the bumps in subsequent decades, that is what happened. When the IMF and World Bank held their spring meetings this month, downtown Washington was adorned with posters hailing “75 years of co-operation”.
But amid the celebrations, it is worth asking: is it time for the IMF to think beyond money? Jim Balsillie, the former co-chief executive of Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind BlackBerry, thinks it is.