The
International Clearing Union (ICU) was one of the institutions proposed to be set up at the 1944
United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire by
British economist
John Maynard Keynes. Its aim was to have been regulation of currency exchange, a role eventually taken by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The International Clearing Union (ICU) would be a global bank whose job would be to regulate trade between nations. All international trade would be denominated in its own currency, the proposed
bancor. The bancor was to have had a
fixed exchange rate with national currencies, and would have been used to measure the
balance of trade between nations. Every good exported would add bancors to a country's account, every good imported would subtract them. Each nation would be
incentivized to keep their bancor balance close to zero. If a nation had too high a bancor surplus the ICU would take a percentage of that surplus and put it into the Clearing Union's
Reserve Fund; this would encourage nations with surpluses to buy other nations' exports. Nations that imported more than they exported would have their currency depreciated against the Bancor; encouraging other nations to buy their products, and making imports more expensive.