Paolo Baffi, the author of many writing in the field of economics and monetary analysis, returned to research upon leaving the helm of the Bank of Italy and worked on different issues and projects. His interest in historical research led him to undertake to write the history of the Bank of International Settlements, which he had served first as an outside consultant, then as a member of the Board of Directors and, finally, ad Vice Chairman. Baffi died before he was able to make full use of the large quantity of material that he assembled from archives in Europe and the United States and complete his historical investigation. However, he did leave us the manuscript published here, in which the complex negotiation and the meeting that led to the birth of the Bank of International Settlements are reconstructed and the principal events of the Bank's first two years of activity (1930-31) examined on the basis of unpublished sources. The idea that the new organization might not only provide technical assistance in the settlement of German reparations but also become the institutional forum for cooperation among central bankers met with resistance from some countries and came up against the complex problems in financial, economic and political relations between the end of the 1920s and the start of the 1930s, as the Great Depression loomed.
The events surrounding the initial activity of the Bank of International Settlements testify to the laborious effort of its founders to define the Bank's field of action and the tools with which to overcome the problems connected with transfers and attain common objectives of monetary and financial stability. But as Baffi makes clear, the decision to create the BIS marked the start of the systematic and institutionalized cooperation among central banks that was to become increasingly effective and important especially after the Second World War.
