New roles in central bank cooperation: towards a global liquidity backstop

This article examines how the world’s foremost reserve currency-issuing central banks have since 2000 assumed the role of an international liquidity backstop. Following the 9/11 terror attacks, the 2007–2010 Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have set up and expanded facilities through which they can grant emergency loans to other central banks. Applying a symbolic interactionist role-theoretical framework, the article argues that the ECB and the Fed have taken these roles not just because of financial pressures but also evolving role conceptions and expectations within the international central banking community. By studying the role of liquidity backstop as a social role, this article highlights central banks’ international agency and the social – as opposed to material – considerations that underpin their cooperation.