Hot on the heels of the Euro, the *UNo*
The relatively sensible, if not altogether committed to being wholly democratic, president of Kazakhstan (he doesn't erect statues of himself everywhere or rename months after himself) has one of the silliest ideas I have encountered in quite some time:
"A new world currency must be created under the aegis of the United Nations Organization, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev...We need to switch to an absolutely new global currency system based on a legitimate and, from the point of view of all countries, joint monetary unit. All countries must participate in its issuance and regulation".
That's pretty silly, but it gets sillier:
Where to begin? If the Euro is the current gold standard for politicised currencies, imagine a currency where gangster states and non-functioning anarchies - Sudan, Somalia, the DPRK - and micro states in the Pacific and the Windies have as much say over the direction of a currency as the USA and Japan. The mind boggles. Meanwhile, the Americans never asked for the dollar to be the de facto global currency any more than we did - way back - with sterling or the Hapsburg Empire was keen on the Maria Theresa Thaler (qv) be the currency on the western seaboard of the Indian Ocean. There are 208 Kazakh Tenge to the pound at the mo', by the way. It is a convertible currency, but shall we say that money markets do not burn white hot trading it. It has dumped against the dollar over the last year, so perhaps that is why Nazarbayev is acting the way he is.
Anyway, NN could always go back to precious metals if he is so unhappy with the greenback.
That's pretty silly, but it gets sillier:
“World currency is de jure not legal because it was never accepted by any communities, any organizations and there is no such law in the world...The procedure of the activity of the world currency issuer is not democratic. The mechanism of the balance of demand and supplies of the world currency is uncompetitive and constrained. The world currency market is not related to civilized markets, whereas the system to issue the world currency is not controllable".
Where to begin? If the Euro is the current gold standard for politicised currencies, imagine a currency where gangster states and non-functioning anarchies - Sudan, Somalia, the DPRK - and micro states in the Pacific and the Windies have as much say over the direction of a currency as the USA and Japan. The mind boggles. Meanwhile, the Americans never asked for the dollar to be the de facto global currency any more than we did - way back - with sterling or the Hapsburg Empire was keen on the Maria Theresa Thaler (qv) be the currency on the western seaboard of the Indian Ocean. There are 208 Kazakh Tenge to the pound at the mo', by the way. It is a convertible currency, but shall we say that money markets do not burn white hot trading it. It has dumped against the dollar over the last year, so perhaps that is why Nazarbayev is acting the way he is.
Anyway, NN could always go back to precious metals if he is so unhappy with the greenback.
Labels: idiots, Sane economics
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 3:17 pm.
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Now the world currency would have to be quite carefully constructed so as to prevent governments printing extra for themselves. Perhaps paper would not do, do we could have a currency based on some kind of "resource" rather than "trust"? A material would have to be found that was impossible to manufacture and sufficiently rare that its value would not be affected too much by new discoveries.
How about gold?
BE - Nicely put, and my sentiments precisely
I wish I had read to the end of the post (particularly the final sentence) before bashing that missive out, though.
Ah, but your extended exposition had the virtue of clarity.
Interesting, as I had been tempted to post on a similar article a few days ago from the same source...
I may now be forced to post on this.
English language Pravda is a bit like the mutant offspring of the Junor-era Sunday Express, the National Enquirer and the Daily Star, so I do not take it /that/ seriously.
I think your priorities are right, by the way.
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