In recent decades, Tokyo, London, and New York have been the sites of credit bubbles of historically unprecedented magnitude. Central bankers have enjoyed almost unparalleled power and autonomy. They have cooperated to construct and preserve towering structures of debt, reshaping relations of power and ownership around the world. In Central Banks and Gold, Simon James Bytheway and Mark Metzler explore how this financialized form of globalism took shape a century ago, when Tokyo joined London and New York as a major financial center.As revealed here for the first time, close cooperation between central banks began along an unexpected axis, between London and Tokyo, around the year 1900, with the Bank of England's secret use of large Bank of Japan funds to intervene in the London markets. Central-bank cooperation became multilateral during World War I—the moment when Japan first emerged as a creditor country. In 1919 and 1920, as Japan, Great Britain, and the United States adopted deflation policies, the results of cooperation were realized in the world's first globally coordinated program of monetary policy. It was also in 1920 that Wall Street bankers moved to establish closer ties with Tokyo. Bytheway and Metzler tell the story of how the first age of central-bank power and pride ended in the disaster of the Great Depression, when a rush for gold brought the system crashing down. In all of this, we see also the quiet but surprisingly central place of Japan. We see it again today, in the way that Japan has unwillingly led the world into a new age of post-bubble economics.

Why did monetary authorities hold large gold reserves under Bretton Woods (1944–1971) when only the US had to? We argue that gold holdings were driven by institutional memory and persistent habits of central bankers. Countries continued to back currency in circulation with gold reserves, following rules of the pre-WWII gold standard. The longer an institution spent in the gold standard (and the older the policymakers), the stronger the correlation between gold reserves and currency. Since dollars and gold were not perfect substitutes, the Bretton Woods system never worked as expected. Even after radical institutional change, history still shapes the decisions of policymakers.

Central banks hold gold reserves that are designed to build confidence in fiat currency. This confidence is undermined if the price of gold falls significantly or rises significantly. Central banks thus have an incentive to manage the price of gold. Such management is evident in fixed gold prices in the early 20th century, in Central Bank Gold Agreements more recently, in an asymmetric price impact of monthly central bank gold reserve changes on gold price changes, in central bank gold lending and the gold carry trade. The asymmetric price impact is consistent with the ability of central banks to control falling gold prices but the inability to control rising gold prices due to the limited gold reserves. The analysis emphasizes the power of market forces relative to central banks and the need for central bank coordination.

This volume contains two major papers prepared for the Bank of England's Tercentenary Symposium in June 1994. The first, by Forrest Capie, Charles Goodhart and Norbert Schnadt, provides an authoritative account of the evolution of central banking. It traces the development of both the monetary and financial stability concerns of central banks, and includes individual sections on the evolution and constitutional positions of 31 central banks from around the world. The second paper, by Stanley Fischer, explores the major policy dilemmas now facing central bankers: the extent to which there is a short-term trade-off between inflation and growth; the choice of inflation targets; and the choice of operating procedures. Important contributions by leading central bankers from around the world, and the related Per Jacobsen lecture by Alexander Lamfalussy, are also included in the volume.

Vol. II: Annexes. Spine title: The role of gold in the domestic and international monetary systems."March 1982."S/N 048-000-00353-2 (set)Item 1089 Bibliography: v. II, p. 557-567.