The Bank for International Settlements is an international financial institution owned by central banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks". The BIS carries out its work through its meetings and through the Basel Process – hosting international groups pursuing global financial stability and facilitating their interaction, it provides banking services, but only to central banks and other international organizations. It is based in Basel, with representative offices in Hong Kong and Mexico City; the BIS was established in 1930 by an intergovernmental agreement between Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Switzerland. It opened its doors in Basel, Switzerland, on 17 May 1930; the BIS was intended to facilitate reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, to act as the trustee for the German Government International Loan, floated in 1930. The need to establish a dedicated institution for this purpose was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, was agreed to in August of that year at a conference at The Hague.

The charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden-Baden in November, adopted at a second Hague Conference on January 20, 1930. According to the charter, shares in the bank could be held by individuals and non-governmental entities. However, the rights of voting and representation at the Bank's General Meeting were to be exercised by the central banks of the countries in which shares had been issued. By agreement with Switzerland, the BIS had its corporate headquarters there, it enjoyed certain immunities in the contracting states. The BIS's original task of facilitating World War I reparation payments became obsolete. Reparation payments were first suspended and abolished altogether. Instead, the BIS focused on its second statutory task, i.e. fostering the cooperation between its member central banks. It provided banking facilities to them. For instance, in the late 1930s, the BIS was instrumental in helping continental European central banks shipping out part of their gold reserves to London.

As a purportedly apolitical organisation, the BIS was unable to prevent transactions that reflected contemporaraneous geopolitical realities, but were widely regarded as unconscionable. For example, as a result of the policy of Appeasement of Nazi Germany by the UK and France, in March 1939, the BIS was obliged to transfer 23 tons of gold it held, on behalf of Czechoslovakia, to the German Reichsbank, following the German annexation of Czechoslovia. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the BIS Board of Directors – on which the main European central banks were represented – decided that the Bank should remain open, but that, for the duration of hostilities, no meetings of the Board of Directors were to take place and that the Bank should maintain a neutral stance in the conduct of its business. However, as the war dragged on evidence mounted that the BIS conducted operations that were helpful to the Germans. Throughout the war, the Allies accused the Nazis of looting and pled with the BIS not to accept gold from the Reichsbank in payment for prewar obligations linked to the Young Plan.

This was to no avail as remelted gold was either confiscated from prisoners or seized in victory and thus acceptable as payment to the BIS. Operations conducted by the BIS were viewed with increasing suspicion from Washington; the fact that top level German industrialists and advisors sat on the BIS board seemed to provide ample evidence of how the BIS might be used by Hitler throughout the war, with the help of American and French banks. Between 1933 and 1945 the BIS board of directors included Walther Funk, a prominent Nazi official, Emil Puhl responsible for processing dental gold looted from concentration camp victims, as well as Hermann Schmitz, the director of IG Farben, Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the J. H. Stein Bank, all of whom were convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity; the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference recommended the "liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment". This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the U.

S. and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as Americans, but it was opposed by head of the British delegation. Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent or postpone the dissolution, but the next day it was approved. However, the liquidation of the bank was never undertaken. In April 1945, the new U. S. president Harry S. Truman ended U. S. involvement in the scheme. The British government suspended the dissolution, the decision to liquidate the BIS was reversed in 1948. After World War II, the BIS retained a distinct European focus, it acted as Agent for the European Payments Union, an intra-European clearing arrangement designed to help the European countries in restoring currency convertibility and free, multilateral trade. During the 1960s – the heyday of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system – the BIS once again became the locus for transatlantic monetary cooperation, it coordinated a number of currency support operations.

The Group of Ten, including the main European economies, Canada and the United States, beca

This is a list of notable butter dishes and foods in which butter is used as a primary ingredient or as a significant component of a dish or a food. Butter is a dairy product that consists of butterfat, milk proteins, water, it is made by churning fresh or fermented milk. Beurre blanc Beurre fondue Beurre Maître d'Hôtel Beurre manié Beurre monté Beurre noir Beurre noisette Bread and butter pudding Buttered rice Butter cake Butter chicken Butter cookie Butter pecan Butter pie Butter salt Butter tart Butter tea Butterbrot Buttercream Butterkist Butterkuchen Buttermilk pie Butterscotch Buttery Chicken Kiev Compound butter, or beurre composé Cookie butter Croissant Danish pastry Deep-fried butter Egg butter Garlic butter, or beurre à la bourguignonne Gooey butter cake Hard sauce Hollandaise sauce Karelian pasty Kouign-amann Linzer torte Pain aux raisins Pozharsky cutlet Popcorn Puff pastry Remonce Torpedo dessert List of dairy products List of pastries List of spreads Mound of Butter – famous painting depicting butter

Municipal budgetary institution of culture Museum of Local History of Volgodonsk District is a museum of local history in the village Romanovskaya, Rostov region. The director is Dzyuba Irina Anatolyevna; the museum was opened in 1998. It is located in the building built in 1908 with a total area of 516 m². Visiting of the museum is included in tourist routes of regional travel companies; the main directions of the museum's work are the storage and exhibition of antiquities, everyday life of peoples inhabiting the region. The museum is engaged in studying the epic poetry and folklore of the local population, collects and spreads historical material about formation of villages, farms and about the origin of their names. Special attention is paid to patriotic education of younger generation. Meetings, lecture, excursions are for this purpose held, thematic exhibitions expositions and exhibitions are arranged; the museum is engaged in educational, research activity. The museum developed and operates a patriotic section "Soldier's medallion", which allowed to find the nameless graves and military burial places of the Great Patriotic War on the territory of the district, to restore the names of the dead soldiers.

Permanent exhibitions are organized in the museum: "Romanov underground", "Winners", "Objects of everyday life of Don Cossacks", "Gornitsa". The attention of museum visitors is provided with rare documents, photographs of Romanov underground workers, historical material of their activity and death. In the museum there are guided tours not only through the halls of the museum, but along the streets of Romanovskaya village, memorable places of the district, monuments; the main fund of the museum - 1097 units of storage and auxiliary - 608 units of storage. The museum developed a layout of the village, in a scale of 1:5