布雷顿林货币体系(Bretton Woods Monetary System)(摘录)
指战后以美元为中心的国际货币体系。其基本内容是美元与黄金挂钩，其他国家的货币与美元挂钩，实行固定汇率制度。
美元处于“等同”黄金的地位，成为各国外汇储备中最主要的国际储备货币。
建立永久性国际金融机构——国际货币基金组织是布雷顿森林体系的一大特色。
关税总协定General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
关税总协定作为布雷顿森林会议的补充，连同布雷顿森林会议通过的各项协定，统称为“布雷顿森林体系”，即以外汇自由化、资本自由化和贸易自由化为主要内容的多边经济制度，构成资本主义集团的核心内容，是按照美国制定的原则，实现美国经济霸权的体制。
Buttonwood
Buttonwood Column 英国《经济学人》(The Economist)杂志为什么会有梧桐树专栏Buttonwood Column呢？这还得从华尔街说起。
1791年美国助理财政部长杜尔操作市场的金融丑闻是导致《梧桐树协议》签署的重要事件之一。经纪人希望制定公共管理条例，规范金融市场，以便平息公众的愤怒，同时将约束机制掌握于自我手中。
一批经纪人于3月21日在克里宾馆集会。根据《美国政府公报》报道：“商人和股票经纪人……任命了一个委员会，负责报告与商业交易运作模式有关的法律和法规，并研究他们的意见是否合适。”
1792年5月17日，24个经纪人在树下召开会议，达成一项协定，协议具有中世纪行业协议的性质，它规定24个签约者进行债券买卖时，彼此间享有优惠，以统一、固定的比率提取佣金。从此，会员专属和固定最低佣金成为传统和定制，延续并影响到以后的交易活动，直到20世纪。《梧桐树协议》的签署，在一定程度上也是为了阻止政府对于金融市场的干涉。
这个协定包含的规则成为数年后(1817年)成立纽约证券和交易管理处的基础，该管理处于1863年易名为纽约证券交易所。也标志了美国金融行业自律的开始。可以说，“梧桐树协定”是美国银行业第一个行业自律文件。这颗华尔街68号院的梧桐(Buttonwood)存活时间也较长，直到1865年6月14日，才毁于一场风暴。而在它此后的200多年的时间，世界各国相继成立了自己的银行业协会（在英国和香港叫做银行公会），制定了相应的行业自律守则。
梧桐树协议(Buttonwood Agreement)，美国梧桐树(Buttonwood)也成了证券投资业的代名词之一。
The Buttonwood Agreement, which took place on May 17, 1792, started the New York Stock & Exchange Board (now called the NYSE, which is short for New York Stock Exchange). This agreement was signed by twenty-four stock brokers outside of 68 Wall Street in New York under a buttonwood tree. The organization drafted its constitution on March 8th, 1817, and named itself the "New York Stock & Exchange Board". In 1863, this name was shortened to its modern form, "New York Stock Exchange". Membership on the NYSE has been held as a valuable property since 1868. Until recently, members could only join by purchasing existing seats, which were limited to a total of 1,366. In December of 2005, the NYSE went both electronic and public, by merging with the already publicly traded Archipelago electronic stock exchange. The new merged company is called the NYSE Group, Inc., and the seats of the NYSE translated into shares of stock which are now traded under the ticker symbol NYX.
Buttonwood: The fragility of perfection完美的脆弱
When supply chains go wrong 如果供应链出现问题
ONLY connect. The words of the novelist E. M. Forster sum up globalisation. An international company may buy its software from California, send its data to India, purchase its electronic equipment from China and staff its canteen with workers from eastern Europe.
“无他，但联系耳。”小说家E. M. Forster的这句话可以用来总结全球化。拿一家国际公司来说，其所用的软件可能购自加利福尼亚，数据可能发送到印度，电子设备可能来自中国，餐厅则雇佣东欧员工。
The theory dates back to the economist Adam Smith andthe principle of specialisation专业分工原理. The productivity of a pin factory can be improved if production is broken down into its component parts. Similarly, companies (and countries) should specialise in fields where they have acomparative advantage比较优势The revenues can be used to buy the other goods and services the company needs, at a cheaper cost than it could manage in-house.
这一理论的源头可以上溯到亚当·斯密（Adam Smith）和专业分工原理（the principle of specialisation）。制针厂可以通过将生产流程分成几个组成部分提高生产率。相似地，企业（以及国家）也应该专注于其拥有比较优势（comparative advantage）的领域。其他所需的商品和服务可以用收入去购买，这要比自己生产便宜。
But specialisation depends on one critical factor: the reliability of supply. A bicycle maker may turn out fantastic handlebars but if his supplier produces wonky wheels (or no wheels at all, because of a strike or other disruption), he will not sell a single bike.
但专业分工依赖一个关键因素：供给的可靠性。一家自行车制造商也许能够生产上乘的把手，但如果供应商提供的轮子质量低下（或者由于罢工或其他原因无法提供轮子），那最后可能连一辆自行车都卖不出去。
David Bowers of Absolute Strategy Research, a consultancy, thinks this makes the global industrial system vulnerable. He draws an analogy with the boom in structured finance, which saw banks distribute risk to specialist vehicles like conduits. They worried less about the creditworthiness of borrowers as a consequence. But when the subprime crisis broke, the risks ended up back on the banks' balance sheets资产负债表 after all. “Just as the banks mispriced credit risk, so companies have misjudged strategic risk,” he says.
在Absolute Strategy Research（一家顾问机构）的David Bowers看来，对供给的可靠性的依赖使得世界产业系统十分脆弱。他用结构化金融的繁荣做类比：银行把风险分散到专业的投资工具如管道（conduit）工具中，如此一来就不必再为贷款人的信用水平担心了。然而次级贷款危机爆发后，风险最终又返回到银行的资产负债表上。David Bowers说：“正如银行没能给信用风险正确地定价，公司也没能正确地判断战略风险。”
In particular, Mr Bowers thinks that loose monetary policy in America is leading, via the currency markets, to inflation in developing countries. That may end up undermining the cost advantages of outsourcing外包, as the prices of raw materials and labour rise.
loose/tight monetary/ financial policy宽松/紧缩的货币/财政政策
特别地，Bowers认为美国放松银根的政策通过外汇市场导致了发展中国家的通货膨胀。这最终会通过推高原材料和劳动力价格削弱外包的成本优势。
In the long run从长期看, disruption to supply chains may be a huge strategic risk. Energy is one obvious area. Britain has just shown how a two-day strike at a Scottish refinery affected deliveries to petrol stations and, more seriously, disrupted oil output. “Just-in-time” inventory levels normally create savings—unless suppliers do not deliver just in time, when they extract a huge cost. American companies such as Mattel, a toy company, have also discovered that their brand names can be tainted if goods made by overseas suppliers (particularly from China) turn out to be bad for consumers' health.
从长期看，供应链断裂可能成为巨大的战略风险。能源领域就是明证。英国人已经看到，一家苏格兰炼油厂持续两天的罢工就能影响加油站的燃油供应，更严重的是，这还影响了石油产出。一般情况下，“恰好（just-in-time）”的存货水平可以节省开支，但如果供应商无法按时交货，这反而会造成巨大的损失。美泰（Mattel）玩具公司等美国企业也发现，一旦海外供应商（尤其是中国厂商）的产品有害消费者健康，其商标名誉就会大受影响。
The problem could be called the “fragility of perfection”.The greater the interdependence within the system, the wider the effects of disruption in one part of it.系统内各部分的相互依赖程度越高，其中某一部分出问题所产生的影响范围就越广。In finance the “originate and distribute” model of bank lending贷款并证券化 may have dispersed risk分散风险, but it also meant that a problem in the American housing market damaged banks all over the world. Similarly, a supply disruption in China, which might have been ignored ten years ago, could prove to be catastrophic in many countries today.
这一问题可以被称作“完美的脆弱（fragility of perfection）”。系统内各部分的相互依赖程度越高，其中某一部分出问题所产生的影响范围就越广。在金融领域，“贷款并证券化（originate and distribute）”的银行借贷模式能够分散风险，但也意味着只要美国房地产市场出现问题，全世界的银行都要受到损害。类似地，中国供给吃紧在十年前可能可以完全忽略不计，但现在足以在许多国家引起灾难性后果。