(Editor’s Note: I’ve been an independent voter for some three decades, and have watched as progressive president after progressive president has led this country down the garden path to global integration.  Today, I fear for my country’s future as I have not ever feared.)

In 1944, 730 delegates from 44 Allied Nations sat down in a posh hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and hammered out a global financial policy that maintained fixed exchange rates linked to the US dollar and a promise that America would keep gold at $35 an ounce.  The International Monetary Fund and the predecessor to the World Bank were both established at this conference being lead by Harry Dexter White (Treasury Official, CFR member, and accused soviet spy) and John Maynard Keynes (yes, that british economist, born in 1883, who thought the government should be deeply involved in the private sector).  As the global economy grew, more reserves and liquidity were required until in 1971, Richard Nixon took America off the gold standard (which was backing the US dollar as a reserve currency), and America’s currency became entirely fiat with only a federally backed promise.  The Bretton Woods agreement ended and floating exchange rates were used as a replacement.

Now for the scary part.

Recently, I received a link to an article about George Soros funding a second Bretton Woods conference of economists and globalist bankers on April 8th through the 11th at the same posh hotel in New Hampshire.  This conference is being sponsored by a Soros moneychild named the Institute for New Economic Thinking which was started with a $50 million pledge from the globalist himself after conversations with Anatole Kaletsky, former Economic Editor of UK’s The Times.   Mr. Kaletsky is commonly punked by satiracal UK magazine, Private Eye, because of his faulty economic predictions. You may experience the same cold shivers I experienced when you check out the advisory board for this particular think-tank including but not limited to a faculty member of the New School for Social Research (remember those folks promoting seizure of your 401(k)?), and one of our favs, Drummond Pike, founder of the Tides Foundation.

If we are going to have a world that is sustainable, that is at peace, and that does promote justice and equity, we have to reinvent the economic model that prevails. – Stephen Heintz, President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Robert Johnson, Executive Director, Institute for New Economic Thinking

Robert Johnson serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

Johnson is an international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy. He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.

Previously, Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to working at Soros Fund Management, he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund.

Johnson served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin). Before this, he was Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).

Johnson was an Executive Producer of the Oscar winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, and is the former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future.

Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A sample of the Institute For New Economic Thinking’s Advisory Board including central banks, money managers, leftist professors, and social justice proponents:

Carmen Reinhart, DENNIS WEATHERSTONE SENIOR FELLOW, PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She was formerly a professor of economics and the director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. She is also a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy; as well as a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Reinhart recently co-authored a book with INET advisory board memberKenneth Rogoff, called This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which analyzed the cyclical nature of financial periods of crisis and growth.

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff were profiled in a recent New York Times story, titled Economists Who Did Their Homework (800 Years of it.)

Reinhart recently prepared a paper for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Jackson Hole Symposium, titled “After the Fall.” The PDF can be found here.

Willem Hendrik Buiter, CHIEF ECONOMIST CITIGROUP

Willem Hendrik Buiter was a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee from June 1997-May 2000. He joined the London School of Economics as a chair in the European Institute in September 2005. In November of 2009, Buiter joined Citigroup as Chief Economist, replacing Lewis Alexander who vacated the position to work with the United States Treasury eight months prior.

Robert Dugger, MANAGING PARTNER, HANOVER INVESTMENT GROUP

Robert Dugger is the Managing Partner of Hanover Investment Group, an asset consulting company specializing in fiscal transitions. He was previously a partner in Tudor Investment Corporation, an asset management company active in currency, bond, equity and commodity markets worldwide, and Director for Policy at the American Bankers Association where he led a panel of nationally recognized bank officers in developing a plan to deal with the US savings and loan crisis. The report of the panel proposed establishing the Resolution Trust Corporation and served as the starting point of the efforts in 1989 to solve the S&L problem.

Duncan Foley, LEO MODEL PROFESSOR NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

Duncan K. Foley graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1964, and received the Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1966. He has taught at M.I.T., Stanford, Barnard College of Columbia University, and since 1999 has been Leo Model Professor at the Economics Department of the New School for Social Research. He is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He has published in the fields of Public Finance, Macroeconomics, Money, Marxist Economic Theory, Economic Dynamics, Neo-Ricardian Economics, Growth Theory, and Complex Systems Theory and Economics. Foley’s recent work includes studies of the relation of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to economics, global warming policy, complexity theory and Classical political economy (“Unholy Trinity: Labor, Capital and Land in the New Economy”, Routledge, 2003), work on the foundations of statistical method, and Marx’s theory of money. He published a book on the history of political economy and economics, “Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology”, in 2007.

William Janeway, SENIOR ADVISOR WARBURG PINCUS

William H. Janeway is Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus. Dr. Janeway received his doctorate in economics from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar. He was valedictorian of the class of 1965 at Princeton University. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus in 1988, where he was responsible for building the information technology practice, he was executive vice president and director at Eberstadt Fleming. Dr. Janeway is a director of Nuance Communications,O’Reilly Media, and Wall Street Systems and a member of the Board of Managers of Roubini Global Economics. He is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cambridge in America, University of Cambridge and Co-Chair of Cambridge’s 800th Anniversary Capital Campaign, and a Founder Member of the Board of Managers of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF). Dr. Janeway is a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council and of the Advisory Boards of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance and the MIT-Sloan Finance Group.

Dr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy

Dr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy, better known as Y.V. Reddy is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1964 batch who served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (India’s central bank) from 6 September 2003 until 5 September 2008. Reddy received his M.A. in economics from Madras University, India. He holds a Ph.D. from Osmania University, Hyderabad. The year of award of his doctoral degree or the title of his thesis is not presently available in the public domain. He also holds a Diploma in Economic Planning from the Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands. Reddy was awarded Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) by Sri Venkateswara University, India; and Doctor of Civil Law (Honoris Causa) by the University of Mauritius. On 17 July 2008 Reddy was made an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics.

Kenneth Rogoff, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Kenneth Rogoff is Professor of Economics and Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. Rogoff has published numerous academic papers in the fields of international finance and macroeconomics. His research topics are exchange sovereign default and debt restructuring, exchange rate developments, global imbalances and the development of financial crises.

The book he recently published jointly with Carmen M. Reinhart, “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” (2009), investigates the history of financial crises over the last eight centuries and was awarded the Paul A. Samuelson Award from the TIAA-CREF Institute.

Prior to his time at Harvard, Kenneth Rogoff taught at the University of California, Berkeley and at Princeton University. He has taught as a visiting professor at institutes including the London School of Economics and New York University, and has worked as a guest researcher for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. From 2001 to 2003 he was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Kenneth Rogoff has been a member of the Group of Thirty (G30), an international committee made up of 30 leading current and former policy-makers, financiers and academics.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, DIRECTOR THE EARTH INSTITUTE

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.

He is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than 20 years Professor Sachs has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing. He is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability, and as Director of the Earth Institute leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Joseph E. Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls “free market fundamentalists”) and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has held the rank of University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester’s Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.

William White, FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS

William White joined the Bank for International Settlements in June 1994 as Manager in the Monetary and Economic Department, and was Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department from May 1995 to June 2008.

Prior to coming to the BIS, Mr. White spent 22 years with the Bank of Canada. His first six years at the Bank of Canada were with the Department of Banking and Financial Analysis, first as an economist and finally as Deputy Chief. In1978 Mr. White became Deputy Chief of the Research Department and was made Chief of the Department in 1979. He was appointed Adviser to the Governor in 1984 and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in September 1988. Mr. White’s early career was spent at the Bank of England, where he was an economist from 1969 to 1972. Born in Kenora, Ontario in 1943, Mr. White was educated at the University of Windsor and the University of Manchester.

Zhu Min, SPECIAL ADVISOR INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

Mr. Min ZHU assumed the position of Special Advisor to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund on May 3, 2010.

Mr. Zhu, a native of China, was a Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China. He was responsible for international affairs, policy research, and credit information. Prior to his service at China’s central bank, he held various positions at the Bank of China where he served as Group Executive Vice president, responsible for finance and treasury, risk management, internal control, legal and compliance, and strategy and research. Mr. Zhu also worked at the World Bank and taught economics at both Johns Hopkins University and Fudan University.
Mr. Zhu received a Ph.D and an M.A. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a B.A. in economics from Fudan University.

Drummond Pike, FOUNDER TIDES

Drummond Pike founded Tides in 1976, stepped down as CEO of Tides Network in October, 2011. Tides Network, which includes Tides Foundation, Tides Center, Tides Shared Spaces, and Thoreau Center for Sustainability. Awarded as an Outstanding Foundation Professional, Drummond helped pioneer fully staffed donor advised funds in philanthropy and has supported grassroots and public interest organizations through environmental and social change philanthropy throughout his career. Drummond has been responsible for the entire Tides enterprise and through his leadership, Tides has helped increase the capacity and effectiveness of thousands of social change organizations. The Tides organizations’ aggregate annual expenditures have exceeded $200 million since 2007.

Prior to founding Tides, Drummond served as executive director of the Shalan Foundation, an organization dedicated to economic change and environmental sustainability. Drummond also co-founded and served as associate director for the Youth Project in Washington, D.C., and he was among the original founders of Working Assets (Credo), a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism.

Drummond’s extensive public service work includes membership on the boards of directors of The Environmental Working Group, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Tides Canada, Sage Centre, Island Press, and the JK Irwin Foundation. Drummond received a Masters of Political Science from the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University after graduating with Honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Barry Eichengreen, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS UC BERKELEY

Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). In 1997-98 he was Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 1997).

Professor Eichengreen is the convener of the Bellagio Group of academics and economic officials and chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. He has held Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Palo Alto) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin). He is a regular monthly columnist for Project Syndicate.

His most recent books are Emerging Giants: China and India in the World Economy, co-edited with Poonam Gupta and Ranjiv Kumar (2010), Labor in the Era of Globalization, co-edited with Clair Brown and Michael Reich (2009), and Fostering Monetary & Financial Cooperation in East Asia, co-edited with Duck-Koo Chung (2009). Other books include What G20 Leaders Must Do to Stabilize Our Economy and Fix the Financial System, coedited with Richard Baldwin,(e-book 2008), Rescuing Our Jobs and Savings: What G7/8 Leaders Can Do to Solve the Global Credit Crisis, coedited with Richard Baldwin,(e-book 2008), Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Second Edition (2008), The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (updated paperback edition, 2008), Bond Markets in Latin America: On the Verge of a Big Bang?, co-edited with Eduardo Borensztein, Kevin Cowan, and Ugo Panizza (2008), and China, Asia, and the New World Economy, co-edited with Charles Wyplosz and Yung Chul Park (2008).

Ian Goldin, DIRECTOR JAMES MARTIN 21ST CENTURY SCHOOL

Dr Goldin is currently Director of the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford. Goldin was previously Vice President of the World Bank (2003–2006) and, prior to that, the Bank’s Director of Development Policy (2001–2003). He served on the Bank’s senior management team, and was directly responsible for its relationship with the UK and all other European, North American and developed countries. Goldin led the Bank’s collaboration with the United Nations and other partners. As Director of Development Policy, Goldin played a central role in the research and strategy agenda of the Bank, working closely with the Chief Economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, under the leadership of James Wolfensohn.

From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and served as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela. He succeeded in transforming the Bank from an apartheid era institution to become the leading agent of development in the 14 countries of Southern Africa. During this period, Goldin served on several Government committees and Boards, and was Finance Director for South Africa’s Olympic Bid.

Previously, Goldin was Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, and Program Director at the OECD Development Centre in Paris, where he directed the Programs on Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development.

Andy Haldane, E.D. FINANCIAL STABILITY BANK OF ENGLAND

Andy Haldane became Executive Director, Financial Stability at the Bank of England on January 1st, 2009. In this role, Andy has responsibility for developing Bank policy on financial stability issues and the management of the Financial Stability Area. Andy is a member of the Bank’s Financial Stability Executive Board and of the Bank’s Executive Management Team.

Before taking up his current role, Andy headed the Bank’s Systemic Risk Assessment Division. His previous roles include Head of Market Infrastructure and Head of International Finance. Prior to that he worked on various issues regarding monetary policy strategy, inflation targeting and Central Bank independence.

Andy is co-founder of a charity ‘Pro Bono Economics’, which aims to broker economists into projects in the charitable sector.  He has written extensively on domestic and international monetary and financial stability, authoring around 80 articles and three books. He is a member of various international public policy committees, economics associations, editorial boards and academic advisory committees.

Erik Berglof, CHIEF ECONOMIST EUROPEAN BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Erik Berglof is Chief Economist and Special Adviser to the President at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development since 2006. He has previously held the position of Professor and Director of SITE at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has also taught at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and held visiting positions at Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

He has published widely on financial development, corporate governance and transition economics. His interests have been particularly oriented towards policy issues in emerging economies, but he has also contributed extensively to the debate on regional and global institutional architecture. He has regularly provided advice to national governments and international institutions including the IMF and the World Bank.

Erik Berglof was the founder and President of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR) in Moscow and a Programme Director at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

A partner with the Institute:
Rick Keating

Rick Keating is the CEO of Keating & Co., the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s marketing and media relations partner.

Keating & Co helps its clients achieve success by creating the messages and stories that convey the essential value of what they do, and ensuring they are heard by the audiences that really matter. Often our role as a PR advisor initiates an introduction, but in the end it is our role as trusted advisors that define the relationship with our clients. We are recognized for our work in counseling companies and organizations with transformational ideas, supporting clients in the sustainability, new economy, social justice, and economic/financial reform areas, among others. Our ongoing involvement with these issues was the catalyst for Keating & Co. to become a B Corporation.

A ‘B’ Corporation:

Why B Corps Matter

Our vision is simple yet ambitious: to create a new sector of the economy which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. This sector will be comprised of a new type of corporation – the B Corporation – that meets rigorous and independent standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Bretton Woods Conference
CRISIS and RENEWAL: International Political Economy at the Crossroads.

INET is pleased to announce that it will hold its annual conference April 8-11, 2011 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the scene of the great conference that established a renewed global economic architecture as World War II drew to a close.

Today, as the aftershocks of our own Global Finance Crisis continue to reverberate, we face our own challenge of reconstruction. The 1944 conference was, famously, largely an Anglo-American affair, whereas today’s reconstruction must engage the larger European Union, as well as the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In the years since the 1944 conference, the globalization of production, trade, and especially finance, has transformed our economy, but has not yet transformed our system of regulation or our tools of policy intervention. Indeed, our very habits of thought and speech lag behind the realities that we desperately need to think and speak about.

This conference reflects INET’s dedication to inspiring and provoking new economic thinking. More than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders from around the world will be attending. Speakers include the former United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mark Carney, Paul Volcker; George Soros, Adair Turner, Joseph Stiglitz, and Harold James. Scroll down this page to see a list of all confirmed speakers.

Visit this page often as we update our list of confirmed speakers and the conference agenda. At the conference, we will be videoing all the panels and we will interview many of the attendees, and we will make this content available to you here at INET Online. We have no doubt that the conference will produce a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking, and true to our mission, we will open this thinking up for everybody to engage and experience.

Significance of the Mount Washington Hotel

In 1944 the United States government chose the Mount Washington Hotel as the site for the first Bretton Woods Conference, which established the World Bank and chose the American dollar as the backbone of international exchange. The meeting provided the world with badly needed post war currency stability.

Foreign central bankers, money managers, professors that follow the Keynesian economic model, and social justice proponents funded by a globalist financial shark are about to convene to best address a new global financial system.  I’m sorry kids, but I am absolutely terrified by the decades of global monetary experience who will be attending this conference and yet somehow could not sound the alarm well before the global economic system started to implode.  Where is William Black, Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff, or Ron Paul? Why is no one from the Mises Institute anywhere near this group, and how long do you think America really has left when the accepted economic experts are about to give away what little sovereignty we have left?

George Soros Talks With Rob Johnson About INET

And in closing, an article from advisor Barry in this morning’s WSJ:

Why the Dollar’s Reign Is Near an End

For decades the dollar has served as the world’s main reserve currency, but, argues Barry Eichengreen, it will soon have to share that role. Here’s why—and what it will mean for international markets and companies.

By BARRY EICHENGREEN

The single most astonishing fact about foreign exchange is not the high volume of transactions, as incredible as that growth has been. Nor is it the volatility of currency rates, as wild as the markets are these days.

Instead, it’s the extent to which the market remains dollar-centric.

Consider this: When a South Korean wine wholesaler wants to import Chilean cabernet, the Korean importer buys U.S. dollars, not pesos, with which to pay the Chilean exporter. Indeed, the dollar is virtually the exclusive vehicle for foreign-exchange transactions between Chile and Korea, despite the fact that less than 20% of the merchandise trade of both countries is with the U.S.

Chile and Korea are hardly an anomaly: Fully 85% of foreign-exchange transactions world-wide are trades of other currencies for dollars. What’s more, what is true of foreign-exchange transactions is true of other international business. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries sets the price of oil in dollars. The dollar is the currency of denomination of half of all international debt securities. More than 60% of the foreign reserves of central banks and governments are in dollars.

The greenback, in other words, is not just America’s currency. It’s the world’s.

But as astonishing as that is, what may be even more astonishing is this: The dollar’s reign is coming to an end.

I believe that over the next 10 years, we’re going to see a profound shift toward a world in which several currencies compete for dominance.

The impact of such a shift will be equally profound, with implications for, among other things, the stability of exchange rates, the stability of financial markets, the ease with which the U.S. will be able to finance budget and current-account deficits, and whether the Fed can follow a policy of benign neglect toward the dollar.

Go over and read the rest if you need to be brainwashed more.