T HIS is an essay in the anti-Ricardian tradition of J. H. Williams. It starts from the assumption that any international system composed of unequal partners will be regulated more by the domestic policies of the larger partners than by any specific foreign policy of any of the partners. Since the international economy and the international financial system have, in the last four decades, been charactensed by the presence of one economy and one financial system, that of the United States, equivalent in size to those of all the others put together, Williams's methodological approach seems eminently suitable for a study of the connotations, motions and mechanisms of the international financial system in these decades. I have used the same approach in another study, which dealt with the international gold standard between 1890 and 1914.1 There I focused on the economy and the financial system oif Britain, and the main purpose of the study was to outline the difficulties arising out of the fact that, having been developed as an offshoot of the British financial system, it had to adjust to Britain's gradual loss of weight in the international economy. An uneasy modus vivendi was reached because the 'international financial vocation' of the British ruling class was never questioned in Britain, which was able to remain the financial centre of the system even when it had lost its economic supremacy to the United States and Germany. The modus vivendi was difficult, and was characterised by commotions and crises of increasing intensity, since not even the British financial system's desire to rule could prevail against the unsettling behaviour of the American economy. Britain's economic growth and India's financial and economic independence were sacrificed, but it was not enough to prevent the crisis of 1907 and the final crisis of August, 1914. The embarrassing presence of the United States, an economic giant and a financial midget, was also at the heart of most inter-war financial difficulties. To a certain extent the American financial system had