From Keynes's bancor to the new regional financial architecture in South America
Résumé
This paper aims at drawing lessons from the main cases made against Keyne's pal, in oder to help improving the design of regional monetary agreements. It is also intended to show that as part of his proposals Keynes drafted a system for exchanging currencies that, if it had been completed, would have allowed him to deal more convincingly than he did with the main objections arisen. Section will present, as a starting point, the regional payments and unit of accounts agreements in Latin America : the Reciprocal Payments and Credits Agreement of the Latin American Integration Association or ALADI, the "Peso Andino" set up by the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR) and the Payment System on Local Currency agreement (SML) launched by Brazil and Argentina. Section 2 will examine the objections arisen against Keynes'plan. Section 3 will focus on the exchange scheme drafted by Keynes and on how to supplement it in order to get over the objections under examination.