The USA appeared on the world stage with a big bang, if you will pardon the pun. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities which announced her entrance. In 1944, at a meeting with the British at the village of Bretton Woods in the northeastern USA, the leaders of the two nations made a historic agreement on the future global infrastructure: something that had been missing in the interwar years; it would remain intact in most respects until the present day.

Private property for the first time became the dominant method to handle land and industry. Banking had grown in importance. The entire edifice was premised on a stable system of exchange; this was the pound sterling which acted as the world's currency. Gold had become the ultimate standard of value for all the major non colonised countries.

The British government at an early stage, in 1916, limited their adherence to the system and by 1931 removed the system altogether. The essence of the global capitalist system, that is the mechanism that held it all together, ceased to work.