Money, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only...

We compare the banking crises in 2008-09 and in the Great Depression, and analyse differences in the policy response to the two crises in light of the prevailing international monetary systems. The scale of the 2008-09 banking crisis, as measured by falls in international short-term indebtedness...

We examine the international propagation of the financial crisis of 2008, and compare it with that of the crisis of 1931. We argue that the collateral squeeze in the United States, which became intense after the failure of Lehman Brothers created doubts about the stability of other financial...

This paper reviews experience with currency convertibility on both the current and capital accounts, with particular attention to the Fund`s concepts and policy implications. After discussing the basic concepts of convertibility, the paper reviews the experience with convertibility in three...

The turbulence in East Asia, the contagious effects on financial markets of other emerging economies and even on the major world stock markets, and the renewed instability in exchange rates are, I think, warnings of trouble in a world in which capital is free to flow as never before around the...

Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944-1971) when only the US had to? We argue that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to back currency in circulation with gold reserves,...

By the early 1960s, outstanding U.S. dollar liabilities began to exceed the U.S. gold stock, suggesting that the United States could not completely maintain its pledge to convert dollars into gold at the official price. This raised uncertainty about the Bretton Woods parity grid, and speculation...

We identify similarities and differences in the scale and nature of the banking crises in 2008-2009 and the Great Depression, and analyse differences in the policy response to the two crises in light of the prevailing international monetary systems. We find that the scale of the banking crisis,...

The global dollar system, though repeatedly reported to be on its last legs—most recently in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, but most famously in the Nixon devaluation of 1971—has repeatedly instead consolidated and gone on to further geographical expansion (McCauley 2021). The key...