Outsourcing Empire: International Monetary Power in the Age of Offshore Finance

Abstract

Offshore finance allows foreign banks to create US dollars under the laws of an offshore jurisdiction. How and why does this affect international monetary power? Conceptually, I argue that offshore finance bifurcates across borders the shared power of the state and banks to create money, combining the US dollar with mostly English law. Empirically, I demonstrate that more US dollars are created offshore outside US jurisdiction than onshore within it. Offshore finance increases liquidity, at higher risk, and leads to a cross-border entanglement of issuing country, offshore financial centers, borrowers, and global banks. In short, offshore finance changes the power inherent in money. Consequently, international monetary power has become the ability to get access to offshore dollars in combination with the capacity to determine international liquidity and to set, select, or circumvent the related rules. It is constrained by the hierarchically organized social credit relations that money consists of. The international monetary power of the United States has become an instance of indirect rule with global banks having been delegated the prerogative of US dollar creation. As is common with indirect rule, it entails a difficult balancing act between geographical reach and centralization of power.