Nevertheless, the legacy of these two men, the international monetary arrangements known as the Bretton Woods System, fruitfully endured for another thirty years. It provided the foundations for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan after the war, it allowed the global economy to boom through much of the 1950s and 1960s without any of the financial crises that had been so much a part of its history, and it set the stage for one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth the world has ever seen.
