Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes (right) at the Bretton Woods Conference

Harry Dexter White (October 1892–August 16, 1948) was an American economist. He was one of the founding fathers of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, White was born in Boston, Massachusetts. As a young man, he served in the U.S. Army, fighting in France during World War I. After leaving the military, he began his education at Columbia University, then transferred to Stanford where he earned a degree in economics. He received a doctorate degree in economics from Harvard University at age 30.

White took up a teaching post at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1934, Jacob Viner, a professor at the University of Chicago working at the Treasury Department, wrote to White offering him a job there. White accepted, and in the latter half of the thirties met with John Maynard Keynes and other leading economists. When the United States entered World War II, White was put in charge of international matters for the Treasury. He had extensive dealings with America's allies, including the Soviet Union.

Philosophically, White was a Keynesian New Dealer. As a dedicated Rooseveltian internationalist his energies were directed at continuing the Grand Alliance and maintaining peace through a liberal trade regime. He believed that powerful multilateral institutions could avoid the mistakes of Versailles and prevent another worldwide depression.

After the war, White was closely involved with setting up what were called the Bretton Woods institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions were intended to prevent some of the economic problems that occurred after the First World War, and help ensure that capitalism became the dominant post-war economic system.

In August 1948, Harry Dexter White appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend his reputation. Two former spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, were alleging that he had spied for Russia. Bentley said his colleagues had passed information to her from him. Chambers claimed that White gave him documents for an underground Communist cell in the 1930s. White, though recovering from a series of heart attacks, stoutly proclaimed his lifelong commitment to the principles of democracy and the ideals of Roosevelt's New Deal. He died of a heart attack three days later and HUAC dropped the case.

Some believe one of the code names in the secret VENONA project referred to White (all of the agents in VENONA were identified by code names only.) In 1953 J. Edgar Hoover convinced Attorney General Brownell that White was a spy. White's bronze bust was ignominiously removed to the IMF's basement.

External links

• Biography of White by the IMF