[1] He held positions in the US Federal Reserve System (1942–1946), the International Monetary Fund (1946–1948), and the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (1948–1951), and helped administer the Marshall Plan while serving in the Economic Cooperation Administration.
[1][3] In 1959, Triffin testified before the United States Congress and warned of serious flaws in the Bretton Woods system.
[1] In the post-war era, the US had to run deficits on the current account of the balance of payments to supply the world with dollar reserves that kept liquidity for their increased wealth.
[5] However, running continuing deficits on the current account of the balance of payments resulted in an ever-increasing stock of overseas-held dollars, eroding confidence in the belief that the dollar would remain convertible into gold at the Bretton Woods parity rate of $35 per ounce.
[4] His idea was largely ignored until 1971, when his hypothesis became reality, forcing US President Richard Nixon to halt convertibility of the United States dollar into gold, an initiative known colloquially as the Nixon Shock, which effectively ended the Bretton Woods System.