Gaitskell thought balance of payments problems should be solved not by realignments of currencies but by asking surplus countries like the US and Belgium to inflate their economies (so they would import more). He was attacked for this by the US Secretary of the Treasury John Wesley Snyder and Camille Gutt (former Belgian finance minister and now Managing Director of the IMF). Dell argues that Gaitskell did not realise that other countries had their own domestic problems. In September 1950, with Britain's balance of payments now in surplus, Gaitskell negotiated British membership of the European Payments Union, meaning that instead of bilateral clearing, European currencies were to be convertible against one another even if not against the US dollar. Previously dollars had been needed for trade within Europe. Until then Gaitskell had shared concerns that some countries might stay in permanent deficit and thus effectively use their neighbours for free borrowing, or conversely that Belgium's surplus would enable her to suck gold and dollars from Britain. The EPU lasted until sterling was made convertible in 1958.