Abstract

The present paper examines various episodes of the monetary history of Brazil
and other countries as well as the recent empirical evidence to look into critically the
two principal proposals of monetary constitution for Brazil: currency board and independent
central bank proposals. We outline also a monetary constitution inspired in the Pandia?
Calo?geras’s Monetary Project (1926) with the only purpose of shedding light on the basic
principles involved in the design of a monetary constitution aimed at controlling the power
to create money and curbing inflation: (a) separation between the power to create money
and the agents that determine public expenditure; (b) a clear monetary rule to constraint the
power to create money; and (e) separation of the power to create money from the regulation
and supervision of banks.

JEL Classification: E51; E58; E42.