As our in-house think tank, the Credit Suisse Research Institute (CSRI) studies long-term economic and financial developments with a global impact. In this report, we pull together facts and thoughts by our leading internal experts as well as external thought leaders about key developments in the international monetary system. This analysis draws on our CSRI Fall Conference 2022 on the same topic. It discusses how macroeconomic imbalances and geopolitics can catalyze change in the current largely USD-based monetary system, how central bank reserves have evolved so far and may be re-assessed going forward, and sketches out a vision for a gradually more multi-polar monetary system.
The past three years have seen abrupt changes in the global economy, economic policy responses and the realm of geopolitics – the latter, in fact, date further back. Not surprisingly, these changes have triggered hefty reactions in financial markets, including money, bond and foreign exchange markets. As in past periods of economic and geopolitical turbulence, they have also raised the question as to whether the international monetary system may be subject to more long-term and fundamental changes. To discuss this question, the Credit Suisse Research Institute held a conference in November 2022, at which a number of academic experts and practitioners presented their perspectives on broader political and economic matters as well as more technical issues related to the evolution of the monetary system. This report presents some of the main areas of debate as well as insights from the conference.
