Overshadowed Founder
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Atish Ghosh
- Published: March 1, 2022
Overview
- Title reviewed: Harry White and the American Creed: How a Federal Bureaucrat Created the Modern Global Economy (and Failed to Get the Credit)
- Publication: F&D Magazine
- Author of review: ATISH REX GHOSH is historian at the IMF.
- Reading indicator on page: Less than a minute(0 words) Read
Key findings about Harry Dexter White and the book by James Boughton
- White’s signature achievement: contribution to shaping the postwar international monetary order decided at the Bretton Woods Conference.
- Boughton credits White with four main insights:
- the postwar system needed to be designed while war was still being waged;
- it would need to be designed by all the allied nations, and not just presented as a fait accompli negotiated between Britain and the United States;
- it should promote multilateral trade and payments;
- it should be based on the US dollar, rather than some new, artificial international currency.
- Boughton documents White’s early years and career trajectory:
- White started his higher education only in his late 20s, after serving in World War I.
- He attended Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard, where he was awarded the prize for the best PhD dissertation in 1932.
- During the Great Depression jobs were hard to come by; White taught at a small college in Wisconsin.
- He interned at the US Treasury for three months in the summer of 1934 after being invited by Jacob Viner.
- During that internship he produced a 400-page report on what monetary system the United States should have.
- On espionage charges:
- Boughton meticulously documents every charge and insinuation that White was a Soviet agent and finds them flimsy and often ridiculous.
- Boughton’s concluding judgment (quoted): “if White was a spy, he was very bad at it…for a man who was so good at everything he applied himself to doing, to accuse him of such an agency would be the unkindest charge of all.”
Assessment and implications
- Boughton’s biography redresses the imbalance of attention between John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, arguing for White’s place alongside Keynes.
- The review highlights a tension in the postwar design choice: basing the international monetary system on the US dollar rather than creating a new international currency, with Boughton (via White) arguing practicality given US Congressional ratification concerns.
Tone and style
- Boughton’s book is described as a fine piece of scholarship that reads like a thriller.
- The review emphasizes Boughton’s careful documentation and defense of White’s legacy.
F&D Magazine — review by ATISH REX GHOSH, historian at the IMF.
Content in this bundle
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- Overshadowed Founder
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