It was only natural that the postwar international economic order was built under American leadership. The pillars of this edifice, which came to be known as the Bretton Woods system, were a gold-dollar standard (an international monetary system under which the US dollar was the key reserve currency, with its value backed by gold), a system of fixed exchange rates, and a short-term lending facility maintained by the International Monetary Fund.
Era lógico que, bajo su liderazgo, se estableciera un orden económico mundial, el llamado Sistema Breton Woods, según el cual se establecía un estándar de dólar basado en el patrón oro que regulaba el sistema monetario internacional, un sistema de tasas de cambio fijas y otro de préstamos a corto plazo, ambos mantenidos por el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI).