Cross-border credit and money capital transfers, and international money in the sense of cross-border payments, have always played a key role in the worldview of economic liberalism. Frequently international money and financial activity have been regarded as proving that, without any government or social direction, trade can reach all corners of the globe and foster capitalist business enterprise everywhere. Behind this view is a nostalgia for the era of the gold standard, approximately between 1870 and 1914, when world currencies were convertible into gold at a fixed rate. The breakdown of that system during the First World War was associated with suspensions of international payments and capital flows. Its return in 1925 was welcomed by Oliver Sprague, adviser to the US Government and the Bank of England, in the following terms:

Financial instability had come to be associated with the absence of a gold standard for money and exchange rates. Suchinstability gave rise to and continues to foster the delusion that the international financial system can provide an automatic mechanism to deal with economic problems.