Architect of the global economic order.

• Author: Bergsten, C. Fred
• Position: Off the News - In memoriam

Helmut Schmidt, who died on November 10, was justly renowned as a world statesman and one of the greatest leaders of postwar Germany. He was also a founding father of the international financial architecture of the past half-century.

In early 1973, Minister of Finance Schmidt, with his French counterpart and good friend Valery Giscard D'Estaing, launched the G-5, which subsequently evolved into a G-7 and annual summits to become the steering committee for the world economy for more than three decades. That initiative paid immediate dividends when the first oil shock hit a few months later and begat historic episodes of international cooperation such as the Plaza Agreement a decade later.

In 1978, Chancellor Schmidt hosted the Bonn summit that still represents the most ambitious effort of all time to coordinate the economic policies of the major industrial nations. All participants were faithfully implementing their commitments until the second oil shock derailed the effort and the United States used the agreement to decontrol its oil prices and promote global energy adjustment. After initially asking the United States to press him to adopt Bonn's "locomotive strategy," the Chancellor turned on it for a while but reversed course after leaving office and forcefully advocated "a new Bonn summit" to stimulate global growth.

Shortly thereafter, the Chancellor (again with Giscard) gave birth...