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THE IMF: AN EMERGING CENTRAL BANK?
Author(s) -
Scaperlanda* Anthony
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6435.1978.tb00666.x
Subject(s) - intermediation , argument (complex analysis) , financial system , central bank , economics , financial intermediary , monetary reform , business , international economics , monetary policy , monetary economics , finance , biochemistry , chemistry
SUMMARY This article argues that in the post‐Bretton Woods era, the International Monetary Fund is rapidly acquiring the characteristics of a central bank for national central banks. Support for this argument is found in the fact that since 1974 the IMF has significantly broadened both its financial intermediation and lending activities. The extent and quality ofconditions which the Fund attached to the January 1977 stand‐by arrangement with the United Kingdom is also cited as resembling central‐bank‐type control. The IMF's influence over the large banks which dominate the commercial interbank market, the new (June 1974) system for valuing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the actual and potential new uses of SDRs, and the broad recasting of the Fund's Articles of Agreement which is accomplished by the Second Amendment are also reviewed and cited as supporting the basic argument.