Bretton Woods restrained bank-driven financial speculation until its dismantling.

Evidence

But it is in the nature of banks to accommodate too many Jacks eager to borrow increasing amounts to keep paying each other more and more, while the banks collect huge profits from funding such a giant Ponzi scheme. Inevitably, this financial house of cards collapses – at which point the little people are crushed by global capitalism’s falling debris, as witnessed in the aftermath of 1929. Bretton Woods was designed to prevent such greed-fuelled recklessness from bringing humanity to the brink of another Great Depression, indeed another world war, ever again. But once it was gone, the bankers were free to run amok – again. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 180

Categorization

• QUESTION: Historical precedent strengthens the claim that removing the Nixon-Shock-era restraints re-released financial recklessness — worth checking the Bretton Woods mechanism detail.
• XREF: connects to: Growing financial power systematically dismantled Bretton Woods-era regulatory controls. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150; Neoliberals were ready accomplices in Bretton Woods’ collapse — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 412; Financialization won by subordinating collective interests to speculative private capital after Bretton Woods (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Growing financial power systematically dismantled Bretton Woods-era regulatory controls. #corroborates (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150
• Neoliberals were ready accomplices in Bretton Woods’ collapse #expands (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 412
• Financialization won by subordinating collective interests to speculative private capital after Bretton Woods #expands (0.78)
• Capital controls were embedded in the Bretton Woods IMF framework #exemplifies (0.75) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 448
• Fixed exchange rates eliminate both hedging demand and speculation rationale for currency futures #exemplifies (0.72) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 645
• Bretton Woods achieved the densest capital controls in capitalist history. #exemplifies (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 420