Russian President Medvedev shows off “possible future world currency”

I had completely missed all this talk of a 'super currency' back in March (see Geitner article below). WhaaaaazUp? "Quantitative Easing".



Russian President Medvedev shows off “possible future world currency” sample at G8 summit
July 12, 2009 — Stefan Fobes

Medvedev Shows Off Future World Money
7.13.09 / Alexandra Odynova / Moscow Times

After months of pushing for a new world currency, President Dmitry Medvedev had more than an idea to tout at his G8 news conference. He had the real thing.

With a broad grin, Medvedev held aloft a shiny gold coin Friday that he said represented a “symbol of unity” and a possible “future world currency.”

“I have some supranational currency in my pocket that I got as a souvenir. This is a test sample of a currency unit under the Unity in Diversity motto,” Medvedev said, holding the coin between two fingers.

“It is called the United Future World Currency. It can already be seen and touched,” he said, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin’s web site.

Examples of the coin, worth $3,900 and produced by the United Future World Currency, a group backing the idea of a global currency, was presented to all world leaders attending the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy...cont'd

http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/russian-president-medvedev-shows-off-possible-future-world-currency-sample-at-g8-summit/

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China Asks For IMF-led Global Currency - Zhou Xiaochuan Calls For Currency Reserve Alternative
March 25, 2009 ·

http://www.getmoneyenergy.com/2009/03/china-asks-for-imf-led-global-currency-zhou-xiaochuan-calls-for-currency-reserve-alternative/

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Geithner turnaround on IMF global currency shocks currency markets
March 30, 2009 — Stefan Fobes

Geithner about-turn on dollar status shocks currency markets
Sterling jumped more than a cent against a sharply falling dollar on Wednesday, with the greenback winded after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he was “quite open” to China’s suggestion of moving toward SDR-linked currency system, Reuters reported.

3.25.09 / UK Telegraph

By 1408 GMT, the pound had jumped to a session high of $1.4725.

However, the dollar soon pared losses after the Treasury Secretary added that the dollar was likely to remain the world’s reserve currency for a long time.

“The market is purely reacting to the Geithner comments and it’s taken out a whole load of stops ,” a London-based trader said. “With a comment like that people just cut all their positions.”

Initially, investors viewed the comment as an about-turn because on Tuesday Mr Geithner had firmly dismissed suggestions that the global economy move away from using the dollar as the main reserve currency.

In a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill, US Republican Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, asked Mr Geithner: “Would you categorically renounce the United States moving away from the dollar and going to a global currency as suggested this morning by China and also by Russia, Mr Secretary?”

Mr Geithner replied, “I would, yes.”

cont'd

http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/geithner-turnaround-on-imf-global-currency-shocks-currency-markets/
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The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency
BST 03 Apr 2009

A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.

"We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.

In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.

It has been a good summit for the IMF. Its fighting fund for crises is to be tripled overnight to $750bn. This is real money.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director, said in February that the world was "already in Depression" and risked a slide into social disorder and military conflict unless political leaders resorted to massive stimulus.

He has not won everything he wanted. The spending plan was fudged. While Gordon Brown talked of $5 trillion in global stimulus by 2010, this is mostly made up of packages already under way.

But Mr Strauss-Kahn at least has resources fit for his own task. He will need them. The IMF is already bailing out Pakistan, Iceland, Latvia, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Bosnia and Romania. This week Mexico became the first G20 state to ask for help. It has secured a precautionary credit line of $47bn.

Gordon Brown said it took 15 years for the world to grasp the nettle after Great Crash in 1929. "This time I think people will agree that it has been different," he said.

President Barack Obama was less dramatic. "I think we did OK," he said. Bretton Woods in 1944 was a simpler affair. "Just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that's an easy negotiation, but that's not the world we live in." ..cont'd

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The-G20-moves-the-world-a-step-closer-to-a-global-currency.html



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Why Supplanting the Dollar Would Be Good for America
By Justin Fox Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1890380,00.html

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IMF Says New Reserve Currency to Replace Dollar Is Possible

By Alexander Nicholson

June 6 (Bloomberg) -- The International Monetary Fund said it’s possible to take the “revolutionary” step of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar over time.

The IMF’s so-called special drawing rights could be used as the basis for a new currency, First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today.

“There are many, many attractions in the long run to such an outcome,” Lipsky told a panel discussing reserve currencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today. “But this is not a quick, short or easy decision,” he said, adding that it would be “quite revolutionary.”

The SDRs would have to be delinked from other currencies and issued by an international organization with equivalent authority to a central bank in order to become liquid enough to be used as a reserve, he said...cont'd

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aUYeJEwZaQrw


IMF - The Case For Global Fiscal Stimulus
March 6, 2009
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2009/spn0903.pdf


And back in 2000....

ECONOMIC FORUMS AND INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS
One World, One Currency:
Destination or Delusion?
Wednesday, November 8, 2000, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
International Monetary Fund
IMF Auditorium, Red Level, (R-710)
700 19th Street, N.W.

As perceptions grow that the world is gradually segmenting into a few regional currency blocs, the logical extension of such a trend also emerges as a theoretical possibility: a single world currency. If so many countries see benefits from currency integration, would a world currency not maximize these benefits?

The dollar bloc, already underpinned by the strength of the U.S. economy, has been extended further by dollarization and regional free trade pacts. The euro bloc represents an economic union that is intended to become a full political union likely to expand into Central and Eastern Europe. A yen bloc may emerge from current proposals for Asian monetary cooperation. A currency union may emerge among Mercosur members in Latin America, a geographical currency zone already exists around the South African rand, and a merger of the Australian and New Zealand dollars is a perennial topic in Oceania. Arguments can persuasively be made on both sides of the issue:

The same commercial efficiencies, economies of scale, and physical imperatives that drive regional currencies together also presumably exist on the next level—the global scale. Why not maximize the benefits for all through a single currency for the ultimate geographical unit—the world?

The smaller and more vulnerable economies of the world—those that the international community is now trying hardest to
help—would have most to gain from the certainty and stability that would accompany a single world currency.

Or, conversely:

The travails of the euro since its introduction last year are a stark reminder of the dangers of corralling different and divergent economies into a single currency, however advanced they may be. True single-currency candidates require international replication that is not found among real, functioning, market economies.

Under a single regional currency, normal cyclical movements in a country's macroeconomic indicators suddenly become threats to regional stability that must be muffled or suppressed, irrespective of their self-correcting impetus or the economic signals they are transmitting.

cont'd

http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ecforums/110800.htm

has already worked for centuries through times of great piracy on the high seas and narrow, hull scraping keelhauling straits :shrug: