Bretton Woods (Mountain Hotel)

Lyrics

[Intro]
July, nineteen forty-four.
The war is not over.
But here, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire...
they have reopened the hotel.
The Mount Washington.
Its heating system sputters against the unseasonable cold.

[Verse 1]
Forty-four nations send their men.
They arrive by shuttle from the railway station.
The world outside is burning.
Here, the scent of polished wood and damp carpets.
Harry Dexter White carries the American plan in his briefcase.
John Maynard Keynes, brilliant and unwell, holds court from his bed,
dictating terms in his pajamas.

[Chorus]
And in the Grand Ballroom, they invent the peace.
Not with treaties, not with maps.
With a number.
Thirty-five American dollars for one fine ounce of gold.
And every other currency, a promise made to the dollar.
The world, tethered to a metal,
in a room in a mountain hotel.

[Verse 2]
The secretaries work through the night.
The clatter of their machines is the sound of construction.
Drafts, revisions, translated into French, into Spanish.
Henry Morgenthau speaks of a new and living instrument,
a way to prevent what came before.
To prevent what is still happening,
just beyond these quiet hills.

[Chorus]
And in the Grand Ballroom, they invent the peace.
Not with treaties, not with maps.
With a number.
Thirty-five American dollars for one fine ounce of gold.
And every other currency, a promise made to the dollar.
The world, tethered to a metal,
in a room in a mountain hotel.

[Bridge]
For three weeks, this building is the center of the world.
A self-contained planet of negotiation.
An agreement on paper, Morgenthau says.
But a solid one.
The muffled thud of a briefcase closing.
A bargain struck in a converted suite.
The architecture of the next fifty years,
sketched out while the world bled.

[Outro]
July twenty-second.
They sign the papers.
They pack their bags.
The hotel will close again.
But the machine they built here...
...it keeps running.
The ghost in the ballroom.
The promise made at Bretton Woods.