THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

Bretton Woods: Township in New Hampshire where the Bretton
Woods Agreement was finalised in 1945 after negotiations mainly
between the British and the US. The system agreed upon has also
been called the dollar gold equivalence standard, because it gave the
status of official global reserve currency to the US$, on condition that
the US guaranteed the convertibility of dollars into gold on demand
of other central banks, at a fixed rate of 535 per ounce. In August
1971, President Nixon unilaterally reneged on that latter clause by
'closing the gold window' when France and the UK requested such
redemptions. This also inaugurated the era of floating exchanges in
which the values of each currency and of gold would be left free to be
determined by market forces.
Capital: In its narrow financial meaning, a sum of money from
which an income can be derived. The two most traditional means for
such income is interest (in case of loans) and dividends (in case of
stocks). By extension, a resource that enhances life. The following
types of capital can be distinguished in this extended meaning:
financial capital, physical capital (plant and equipment), intellectual
capital (patents, copyrights), social capital (relationships within
communities) and natural capital ('Mother Nature').
Central Bank: Organisation, which is officially in charge of
managing a national currency. Some central banks are owned by
private banks (e.g the US Federal Reserve Bank, or the Swiss, Italian
or South African central banks); some owned by the government (e.g.
Banque de France, and the UK's Bank of England since its
nationalisation in 1946); some are mixed (e.g. the Belgian central
bank). All central banks are responsible for the internal stability (i.e.
inflation-fighting) and external stability (i.e. value of the currency
compared to other national currencies). They have a variety of means
at their disposal to achieve these aims, including intervention (buying
or selling the national currency in the market in exchange for other