War and money: how the war in Ukraine will change the international monetary system
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13133/2037-3651/17741Keywords:
payment system, SWIFT, digital currency, RussiaAbstract
The invasion of Ukraine will change the economic and political scenarios. Together with the sanctions, it will accelerate the ‘de-globalization’ process already triggered by the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. In this paper, we analyze the effects that economic sanctions will have, in particular, on the international monetary system. In recent years, the dominance of the dollar as the default international currency has weakened albeit slowly. However, in the new scenario, alternative systems to SWIFT (particularly the Chinese one) will receive a strong boost as will the use of payments in currencies other than the dollar. As has already happened in other historical periods, the change in the dominant international currency is linked to epochal events and to a change in the technological paradigm: the war and the development of a digital currency in China and then in other countries could form the basis of this turning point.
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