The Bretton Woods system after the 2008 crisis
In the wake of the Global financial crisis of 2008, policymakers and others have called for a new international monetary system that some of them also dub Bretton Woods II. On the other side, this crisis has revived the debate about Bretton Woods II.[Notes 5]
On 26 September 2008, French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said, "we must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods."[27]
On 24-25 September 2009 US President Obama hosted the G20 in Pittsburgh. A realignment of currency exchange rates was proposed. This meeting's policy outcome could be known as the Pittsburgh Agreement of 2009, where deficit nations may devalue their currencies and surplus nations may revalue theirs upward.
In March 2010, Prime Minister Papandreou of Greece wrote an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, in which he said: "Democratic governments worldwide must establish a new global financial architecture, as bold in its own way as Bretton Woods, as bold as the creation of the European Community and European Monetary Union. And we need it fast." In interviews coinciding with his meeting with President Obama, he indicated that Obama would raise the issue of new regulations for the international financial markets at the next G20 meetings in June and November 2010.
Over the course of the crisis the IMF progressively relaxed its stance on "free market" principles such as its guidance against using capital controls. In 2011 the IMF's managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn stated that boosting employment and equity "must be placed at the heart" of the IMF's policy agenda. [28] The World Bank indicated a switch towards greater emphases on job creation.[29] [30]