As indicated by the impossible trilemma developed much later, according to which governments can only realize two out of the three policy goals of fixed exchange rates, free capital movements, and monetary autonomy, the Bretton Woods system sacrificed free capital movements (see Figure 8.1). At the time, this was not perceived as a sacrifice by most economists and politicians. On the contrary, governments were even invited to control all international capital movements. Accordingly, the postwar decades developed into the period with the densest capital controls in the history of international capitalism.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 420