Pour un partenariat monetaire

In: Critique internationale: revue comparative de sciences sociales, Heft 15, S. 173-187

Abstract

International cooperation in monetary policies as it was "invented" at Bretton Woods is based on a principle of fairness & the idea of creating a legal & institutional framework limiting state sovereignty in favor of cooperation. Although this ideal did not hold up through exchange crises, the fairness principle has never explicitly been challenged, & a fairly broad consensus between Europeans & Americans has endured. However, since that episode, the IMF & the World Bank have mainly played a crisis management & consulting role in macro- & even microeconomic policy. Does the completion of the European monetary union prefigure the constitution of a large monetary bloc to compete with that of the dollar, doing away once & for all with the notion of an international monetary authority? The rising protest against "messy globalization" that has come to the fore without really threatening international financial institutions should nevertheless incite a revision of a system based on the hegemony of the strongest, the legitimacy of which is already dwindling. Adapted from the source document.