Читать книгу Financial Cold War. A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets онлайн

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Keynes had seen the question of reparations as being inextricably tied to the debts that the European Allies had taken on to finance the war. He had therefore proposed that the peace treaty include a financial package that would have linked the reparations paid by Germany to the level of repayments by the Allies to each other and to the US. The US had lent $12 billion to the Europeans during WW1, of which around $5 billion was owed by Great Britain and $4 billion by France. In turn, Britain was owed $11 billion by 17 countries, including some $3 billion due from France and $2.5 billion due from Russia, which had become uncollectible following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.ssss1 Understandably, the Americans were reluctant to take a write-down on their loans to the Allies and Woodrow Wilson dismissed Keynes’ proposal, insisting that reparations and war debts be treated as two separate matters.

Reparations and war debt, however, were not the greatest villains in the cast that Keynes held responsible for the global economic ills of the interwar period. The leading role, as his thinking developed through the 1920s, was reserved for gold.