The Rise of the US Federal Reserve as a World Monetary Authority: Revisiting the Volcker Shock

Abstract

In the existing International Political Economy literature, the Volcker Shock has been widely regarded as historical significance in the development of international political economy. Three successive waves of IPE have evolved to highlight it respectively, as a subjugation of the US state to pressures of foreign states, to international financial power, and institutional configurations of US financial power. Without close attention to the particular role of the US Federal Reserve, however, these observations obscure the unprecedented process of a new mode of monetary governance. This paper argues that the Volcker Shock ushered in the rise of the US Federal Reserve as a world monetary authority in a way that the inner-making process of autonomous monetary policy became a new way of governing monetary and financial affairs. The Federal Reserve was able to pursue autonomous monetary policy far away from the economic management of the US government and at the same time to discipline banks in international financial markets. The Federal Reserve eventually established itself as a new kind of monetary authority between US government and international financial markets. This paper contributes to the study of international monetary power.