It was something on [link|http://www.abc.net.au/rn/|ABC Radio National] last week that I unfortunately only heard part of, but it was someone talking about the history of the IMF and the World Bank. Basically, there were several competing proposals for this sort of international setup and one in particular involved a credit/debit system that charged countries an amount of the balance - which side of zero it was - to stay afloat. The effect would have been to encourage countries to maintain near-zero balances.

However, the US didn't like it and had proposed basically the current IMF/World Bank system. They also issued a kind of ultimatum along the lines of "do it our way or we won't participate". The rest is history.

It would have been nice to hear the whole program, but I didn't have the time.

Wade.