The term gold bloc was applied to seven nations, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland, that kept the gold standard during the world economic crisis of 1929 to 1933, even as many other nations abandoned it[1] [2] .[3]
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Great Britain, Japan and the Scandinavian nations abandoned the gold standard in 1931. Gold bloc nations recommitted themselves to maintain a stable rate of exchange of their currencies at the 1933 international economic conference in London. By this time, some 35 nations including the United States and Italy had abandoned the gold standard.
The currency crisis continued after the devaluation of the United States dollar in 1934 and ongoing devaluation of the British pound sterling. Gold bloc nations found it difficult to maintain a profitable export business and experienced a "flight of capital" to the United States. Belgium and Luxembourg gave up the gold standard in 1935 and devalued their currencies. After the Tripartite Agreement of 1936 between the United States, Great Britain and France, the remaining gold bloc nations abandoned the gold standard.
Economists writing A Program for Monetary Reform (1939), indicated Scandinavian nations that abandoned the gold standard in 1931 recovered from the world-wide depression earlier than nations such as France that remained on the gold standard.