I'm not a goldbug, but I enjoy reading arguments in favor of alternative currencies, particularly when proffered by those as smart as Jesse and Martin Wolf.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-will-new-world-reserve-currency.html">What Will the World Reserve Currency System Become? The Stakes Are Enormous
Jesse's Café AméricainThe deterioration of the dollar reserve currency regime is obvious.
If we have forecasted correctly, the world will look to some variation of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as an eventual replacement for the US dollar. Therefore, the recomposition of the SDR next year will become a lightning rod for the global stresses created by an increasingly unstable and impractical system of global trade.
As you may recall, Russia and China have called for the inclusion of more currencies such as the rouble, the yuan, the Aussie and Canadian dollars, and gold and possibly silver into the mix. The BRIC's seem determined to break the western dominance of global monetary policy.
This may also explain some of the highly emotional,and we would say nonsensical, arguments attacking gold and silver by some of the house economists for the western Banks, and their camp followers and hand puppets in the universities, of late.
The bankers are appalled at the prospect of the new SDR including gold or silver in its new composition to be set in 2010. And so they are jawboning ahead of it. Any country can build its gold and silver reserves in the open market, and the big central bankers find it difficult to manipulate their supplies to their own advantage, despite years of desperate efforts to substitute paper for metal.
John Paulson has
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704533904574543713428787876.html">Bet big on gold, too.
Also from Jesse: