Central Banks: Challenges and Tools in Geopolitical Rivalries
Central banks have become major strategic players in international economic balances. Faced with systemic crises (2008, Covid-19), the major central banks have developed unprecedented coordination of their interventions, fostering the emergence of the “Jackson Hole consensus.”
Aiming to preserve the stability of the international financial system, their influence is based on a unique institutional capacity to create monetary liquidity, enabling the acquisition of assets or the refinancing of banking institutions.
In response to this Western financial architecture, China and Russia are accelerating the development of alternative infrastructures: cross-border payment systems, multilateral digital currency projects, diversification of foreign exchange reserves into gold, and a gradual reduction in dollar holdings. China’s strategy aims to internationalize the yuan as a reserve currency, while maintaining strict control over capital movements.
The Trump administration’s political interventions in US monetary policy, combined with the freezing of Russian sovereign assets, are undermining the transatlantic consensus. The emergence of dollar-backed stablecoins could exacerbate this fragmentation of the system, raising doubts about the benevolent hegemony of the United States and encouraging each currency area to develop its own financial infrastructure in anticipation of future conflicts that will test the geopolitical influence of central banks.
Arnaud Odier works for the investment banking subsidiary of a major French banking group.
This study is only available in French: "Les banques centrales, enjeux et outils des rivalités géopolitiques".
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