Harry Dexter White
1892 – 1948 American Economist, US Treasury official, architect of Bretton Woods
US Treasury economist who out-argued Keynes at Bretton Woods and shaped the dollar-centred postwar order.
- Religion
- Jewish
- Affiliations
- US Treasury; chief American negotiator at Bretton Woods; first US executive director of the IMF.
Harry Dexter White was a US Treasury economist and the leading American architect of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. His plan, favouring the dollar and US interests, prevailed over the rival scheme of John Maynard Keynes, and he helped create the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He briefly served as the first US executive director of the IMF. After his death he was accused of having passed information to Soviet intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s, an allegation drawn partly from the decrypted Venona cables; the charge is contested and White denied any disloyalty before a congressional committee days before he died.
Connections
- associate of Eugene Meyer — Worked in the early Bretton Woods institutions that White helped design.
- rival of John Maynard Keynes — Led the American side that outmanoeuvred Keynes's plan at Bretton Woods.
- rival of John Maynard Keynes — White led the US design that prevailed over Keynes at Bretton Woods.
In the timeline
- 1935 Harry Dexter White recruited as Soviet agent central figure
- 1942 White drafts the postwar stabilization fund plan mentioned
- 1943 White and Keynes plans for postwar finance published US plan
- 1944 Bretton Woods Conference architect
- 1944 Bretton Woods Conference sets the postwar monetary order architect
- 1944 The Bretton Woods conference builds a new financial order architect
- 1944 The IMF and the World Bank are created architect
- 1944 Keynes loses the argument to Harry Dexter White lead US negotiator
- 1946 FBI warns Truman that White leaked to Soviets mentioned
- 1948 Death of Harry Dexter White central figure