Regional currencies and regional monetary zones in Latin America : what prospects ?

This paper aims at drawing lessons from Keynes's plan presented at the Bretton Woods conference, in order to help improving current regional monetary agreements in Latin America. Some promoters of the Bank of the South and the New Financial Architecture in Latin America are proposing to implement a regional clearing system designed to allow a multilateral offsetting of the liabilities and assets generated in the reciprocal transactions of member countries in words that the British economist certainly would not have denied. This system would be very different from current regional payments aggreements that maintain an implicit reference to the US dollar as reserve or payment currency.