O momento “Bretton Woods” da Covid-19 e a cooperação monetária por bancos centrais

abstract

The Covid-19 crisis reinforced and consolidated a template for global monetary cooperation, aiming to keep the international financial markets functioning. At the core of the monetary system, the legal design for cooperation has changed substantially: from the central role of multilateral organizations responsible for organizing collective actions (such as the International Monetary Fund - IMF), to more flexible contractual arrangements, formalized by a network of Central Bank swaps. The management of the Covid-19 monetary impacts reveals a new Bretton Woods moment, organized in novel political and legal terms. This article argues that Law has an explanatory and constitutive role in this substantial development. The US dollar, as a global currency, is structured by a specific type of contract, the eurodollar. In times of crisis, this contract requires an international lender of last resort that provides unlimited financial support to the currency’s global uses. Only a financial institution organized as a central bank has the legal and economic capacity to perform this role - not a multilateral fund. The hierarchical network of Central Bank swaps, with the American Central Bank (the Federal Reserve - Fed) at the top, was the legal arrangement structured to support the functioning of the global financial market and its currency par excellence, the eurodollar.

keywords:
International Monetary Fund (IMF); Central Banks; Federal Reserve (FED); Global monetary cooperation; Central Bank swaps