How Central Banks Shape the World

Central banks, as FP’s Adam Tooze wrote in 2020, “hold the reins of the global economy.” In recent decades, their role has expanded, and more analysts have begun to ask not just whether but how central banks shape geopolitics.

This edition of Flash Points offers some answers to that question, with insightful essays on the reign of the dollar, the global influence of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the relationship between autocracy and monetary policy, and more.—Chloe Hadavas

Joan Wong illustration for Foreign Policy

The Rise and Fall and Rise (and Fall) of the U.S. Financial Empire

The dollar is dead. Long live the dollar, FP’s Adam Tooze writes.

Foreign Policy illustration

How the Fed Became Everything (and Everything Became the Fed)

Two books peel back the curtain on the central bank—but miss why it misread the economy in the wake of the pandemic, David Wessel writes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva shake hands in Beijing on April 14.Ken Ishii/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

A BRICS Currency Could Shake the Dollar’s Dominance

De-dollarization’s moment might finally be here, Joseph W. Sullivan writes.

Christine Lagarde, then-director of the International Monetary Fund, speaks with Jerome Powell, the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, during the family picture of the G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Buenos Aires on July 21, 2018. EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP via Getty Images

The Death of the Central Bank Myth

For decades, monetary policy has been treated as technical, not political. The pandemic has ended that illusion forever, FP’s Adam Tooze writes.

A Soviet poster titled “One Ruble—This is Our Profit,” circa 1965. Pierce Archive LLC/Buyenlarge via Getty Images

How Dictators Make Money—and Money Makes Dictators

A new history of Russia’s ruble highlights the reciprocal relationship between autocracy and monetary policy, Carey K. Mott writes.