Keynes’s Loan Negotiations in 1945 Faced with a “Financial Dunkirk”
摘要
The purpose of this paper is to examine the course of negotiations from late August 1945, when the negotiations on loans to the US started, to the Anglo-American Financial Agreements (December 6), and to evaluate the stance Keynes showed as a negotiator. Negotiations began with an explanation to the American side of the British side’s current and immediate financial situation. As World War II progressed, the US joined the Allied after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec.7, 1941). The Roosevelt administration announced that it would provide considerable arms aid to the Allied Forces under the Lend-Lease Act without regard to conditions. Keynes’s basic stance was to secure the future of the British Empire as much as possible while receiving aid from the US and constructing a post-war regime on an equal footing with the US. To that end, he believed that it was essential to establish an international organization and system that followed international idealism.