Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans
were announced for implementing the creation of a
new global currency to replace the US dollar’s
role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of
the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of
the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a
general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn
(£170bn) into the world economy and increase
global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing
Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by
the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph
reported, “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.”[1]
The article continued in stating that,
“There is now a world currency in waiting. In
time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking
place for the foreign holdings of central banks,
led by the People's Bank of China.” Further, “The
creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like
the first step towards a global financial
regulator,” or, in other words, a global central
bank.
It is important to take a closer look
at these “solutions” being proposed and
implemented in the midst of the current global
financial crisis. These are not new suggestions,
as they have been in the plans of the global elite
for a long time. However, in the midst of the
current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their
agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It
is important to address the background to these
proposed and imposed “solutions” and what effects
they will have on the International Monetary
System (IMS) and the global political economy as a
whole.
A New
Bretton-Woods
In
October of 2008, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of
the UK, said that we “must have a new Bretton
Woods - building a new international financial
architecture for the years ahead.” He continued in
saying that, “we must now reform the international
financial system around the agreed principles of
transparency, integrity, responsibility, good
housekeeping and co-operation across borders.” An
article in the Telegraph reported that Gordon
Brown would want “to see the IMF reformed to
become a ‘global central bank’ closely monitoring
the international economy and financial
system.”[2]
On October 17, 2008, Prime Minister
Gordon Brown wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post
in which he said, “This week, European leaders
came together to propose the guiding principles
that we believe should underpin this new Bretton
Woods: transparency, sound banking,
responsibility, integrity and global
governance. We agreed that urgent decisions
implementing these principles should be made to
root out the irresponsible and often undisclosed
lending at the heart of our problems. To do this,
we need cross-border supervision of financial
institutions; shared global standards for
accounting and regulation; a more responsible
approach to executive remuneration that rewards
hard work, effort and enterprise but not
irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of
our international institutions to make them
effective early-warning systems for the world
economy.[Emphasis added]”[3]
In early October 2008, it was reported
that, “as the world's central bankers gather this
week in Washington DC for an IMF-World Bank
conference to discuss the crisis, the big question
they face is whether it is time to establish a
global economic "policeman" to ensure the crash of
2008 can never be repeated.” Further, “any
organisation with the power to police the global
economy would have to include representatives of
every major country – a United Nations of economic
regulation.” A former governor of the Bank of
England suggested that, “the answer might already
be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank
for International Settlements (BIS),” however,
“The problem is that it has no teeth. The IMF
tends to couch its warnings about economic
problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS
is more independent and much better placed to deal
with this if it is given the power to do
so.”[4]
Emergence
of Regional Currencies
On January 1, 1999, the European Union
established the Euro as its regional currency. The
Euro has grown in prominence over the past several
years. However, it is not to be the only regional
currency in the world. There are moves and calls
for other regional currencies throughout the
world.
In 2007, Foreign Affairs, the journal
of the Council on Foreign Relations, ran an
article titled, The End of National Currency, in
which it began by discussing the volatility of
international currency markets, and that very few
“real” solutions have been proposed to address
successive currency crises. The author poses the
question, “will restoring lost sovereignty to
governments put an end to financial instability?”
He answers by stating that, “This is a dangerous
misdiagnosis,” and that, “The right course is not
to return to a mythical past of monetary
sovereignty, with governments controlling local
interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance
of the rest of the world. Governments must let go
of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them
to make and control the money used in their
territory. National currencies and global markets
simply do not mix; together they make a deadly
brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension
and create ready pretexts for damaging
protectionism. In order to globalize safely,
countries should abandon monetary nationalism and
abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of
today's instability.”
The author explains that, “Monetary
nationalism is simply incompatible with
globalization. It has always been, even if this
has only become apparent since the 1970s, when all
the world's governments rendered their currencies
intrinsically worthless.” The author states that,
“Since economic development outside the process of
globalization is no longer possible, countries
should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments
should replace national currencies with the dollar
or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate
to produce a new multinational currency over a
comparably large and economically diversified
area.” Essentially, according to the author, the
solution lies in regional
currencies.[5]
In October of 2008, “European Central
Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a
``tri-polar'' global currency system is developing
between Asia, Europe and the U.S. and that he's
skeptical the U.S. dollar's centrality can be
revived.”[6]
The Union of
South American Nations
The Union of South American Nations
(UNASUR) was established on May 23, 2008, with the
headquarters to be in Ecuador, the South American
Parliament to be in Bolivia, and the Bank of the
South to be in Venezuela. As the BBC reported,
“The leaders of 12 South American nations have
formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic
and political integration in the region,” and
that, “The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana,
Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and
Venezuela.”[7]
The week following the announcement of
the Union, it was reported that, “Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday
that South American nations will seek a common
currency as part of the region's integration
efforts following the creation of the Union of
South American Nations.” He was quoted as saying,
“We are proceeding so as, in the future, we have a
common central bank and a common currency.”[8]
The Gulf
Cooperation Council and a Regional
Currency
In 2005, the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC), a regional trade bloc among Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates (UAE), announced the goal of
creating a single common currency by 2010. It was
reported that, “An economically united and
efficient GCC is clearly a more interesting
proposition for larger companies than each
individual economy, especially given the
impediments to trade evident within the region.
This is why trade relations within the GCC have
been a core focus of late.” Further, “The natural
extension of this trend for increased integration
is to introduce a common currency in order to
further facilitate trade between the different
countries.” It was announced that, “the region's
central bankers had agreed to pursue monetary
union in a similar fashion to the rules used in
Europe.”[9]
In June of 2008, it was reported that,
“Gulf Arab central bankers agreed to create the
nucleus of a joint central bank next year in a
major step forward for monetary union but signaled
that a new common currency would not be in
circulation by an agreed 2010 target.”[10] In
2002, it was announced that the “Gulf states say
they are seeking advice from the European Central
Bank on their monetary union programme.” In
February of 2008, Oman announced that it would not
be joining the monetary union. In November of
2008, it was announced that the “Final monetary
union draft says Gulf central bank will be
independent from governments of member
states.”[11]
In March of 2009, it was reported that,
“The GCC should not rush into forming a single
currency as member states need to work out the
framework for a regional central bank, Saudi
Arabia's Central Bank Governor Muhammad Al
Jasser.” Jasser was further quoted as saying, “It
took the European Union 45 years to put together a
single currency. We should not rush.” In 2008,
with the global financial crisis, new problems
were posed for the GCC initiative, as “Pressure
mounted last year on the GCC members to drop their
currency pegs as inflation accelerated above 10
per cent in five of the six countries. All of the
member states except Kuwait peg their currencies
to the dollar and tend to follow the US Federal
Reserve when setting interest rates.”[12]
An Asian
Monetary Union
In 1997, the Brookings Institution, a
prominent American think tank, discussed the
possibilities of an East Asian Monetary Union,
stating that, “the question for the 21st century
is whether analogous monetary blocs will form in
East Asia (and, for that matter, in the Western
Hemisphere). With the dollar, the yen, and the
single European currency floating against one
another, other small open economies will be
tempted to link up to one of the three.” However,
“the linkage will be possible only if accompanied
by radical changes in institutional arrangements
like those contemplated by the European Union. The
spread of capital mobility and political
democratization will make it prohibitively
difficult to peg exchange rates unilaterally.
Pegging will require international cooperation,
and effective cooperation will require measures
akin to monetary unification.”[13]
In 2001, Asia Times Online wrote an
article discussing a speech given by economist
Robert A. Mundell at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn
University, at which he stated that, “[t]he "Asean
plus three" (the 10 members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, and
Korea) ‘should look to the European Union as a
model for closer integration of monetary policy,
trade and eventually, currency integration’.”[14]
On May 6, 2005, the website of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
announced that, “China, Japan, South Korea and the
10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to expand their
network of bilateral currency swaps into what
could become a virtual Asian Monetary Fund,” and
that, “[f]inance officials of the 13 nations, who
met in the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) annual conference in Istanbul, appeared
determined to turn their various bilateral
agreements into some sort of multilateral accord,
although none of the officials would directly call
it an Asian Monetary Fund.”[15]
In August of 2005, the San Francisco
Federal Reserve Bank published a report on the
prospects of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating
that East Asia satisfies the criteria for joining
a monetary union, however, it states that compared
to the European initiative, “The implication is
that achieving any monetary arrangement, including
a common currency, is much more difficult in East
Asia.” It further states that, “In Europe, a
monetary union was achievable primarily because it
was part of the larger process of political
integration,” however, “There is no apparent
desire for political integration in East Asia,
partly because of the great differences among
those countries in terms of political systems,
culture, and shared history. As a result of their
own particular histories, East Asian countries
remain particularly jealous of their sovereignty.”
Another major problem, as presented by
the San Francisco Fed, is that, “East Asian
governments appear much more suspicious of strong
supranational institutions,” and thus, “in East
Asia, sovereignty concerns have left governments
reluctant to delegate significant authority to
supranational bodies, at least so far.” It
explains that as opposed to the steps taken to
create a monetary union in Europe, “no broad free
trade agreements have been achieved among the
largest countries in the region, Japan, Korea,
Taiwan, and China.” Another problem is that, “East
Asia does not appear to have an obvious candidate
for an internal anchor currency for a cooperative
exchange rate arrangement. Most successful new
currencies have been started on the back of an
existing currency, establishing confidence in its
convertibility, thus linking the old with the
new.”
The report concludes that, “exchange
rate stabilization and monetary integration are
unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, East Asia
is integrating through trade, even without an
emphasis on formal trade liberalization
agreements,” and that, “there is evidence of
growing financial cooperation in the region,
including the development of regional arrangements
for providing liquidity during crises through
bilateral foreign exchange swaps, regional
economic surveillance discussions, and the
development of regional bond markets.” Ultimately,
“East Asia might also proceed along the same path
[as Europe], first with loose agreements to
stabilize currencies, followed later by tighter
agreements, and culminating ultimately in adoption
of a common anchor—and, after that, maybe an East
Asia dollar.”[16]
In 2007, it was reported that, “Asia
may need to establish its own monetary fund if it
is to cope with future financial shocks similar to
that which rocked the region 10 years ago,” and
that, “Further Asian financial integration is the
best antidote for Asian future financial
crises.”[17]
In September of 2007, Forbes reported
that, “An East Asian monetary union anchored by
Japan is feasible but the region lacks the
political will to do it, the Asian Development
Bank said.” Pradumna Rana, an Asian Development
Bank (ADB) economist, said that, “it appears
feasible to establish a currency union in East
Asia -- particularly among Indonesia, Japan,
(South) Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand,” and that, “The economic potential
for monetary integration in Asia is strong, even
though the political underpinnings of such an
accord are not yet in place.” Further, “the real
integration at the trade levels 'will actually
reinforce the economic case for monetary union in
Asia, in a similar way that real-sector
integration did so in Europe,” and ultimately,
“the road to an Asian monetary union could proceed
on a 'multi-track, multi-speed' basis with a
seamless Asian free trade area the goal on the
trade side.”[18] In April of 2008, it was reported
that, “ASEAN bank deputy governors and financial
deputy ministers have met in Vietnam's central Da
Nang city, discussing issues on the financial and
monetary integration and cooperation in the
region.”[19]
African
Monetary Union
Currently, Africa has several different
monetary union initiatives, as well as some
existing monetary unions within the continent. One
initiative is the “monetary union project of the
Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS),” which is a “regional group of 15
countries in West Africa.” Among the members are
those of an already-existing monetary union in the
region, the West African Economic and Monetary
Union (WAEMU). The ECOWAS consists of Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea
Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo,
Cape Verde, Liberia, Ghana, Gambia, and
Nigeria.[20]
The African Union was founded in 2002,
and is an intergovernmental organization
consisting of 53 African states. In 2003, the
Brookings Institution produced a paper on African
economic integration. In it, the authors started
by stating that, “Africa, like other regions of
the world, is fixing its sights on creating a
common currency. Already, there are projects for
regional monetary unions, and the bidding process
for an eventual African central bank is about to
begin.” It states that, “A common currency was
also an objective of the Organization for African
Unity and the African Economic Community, the
predecessors of the AU,” and further, that, “The
1991 Abuja Treaty establishing the African
Economic Community outlines six stages for
achieving a single monetary zone for Africa that
were set to be completed by approximately 2028. In
the early stages, regional cooperation and
integration within Africa would be strengthened,
and this could involve regional monetary unions.
The final stage involves the establishment of the
African Central Bank (ACB) and creation of a
single African currency and an African Economic
and Monetary Union.”
The paper further states that the
African Central Bank (ACB) “would not be created
until around 2020, [but] the bidding process for
its location is likely to begin soon,” however,
“there are plans for creating various regional
monetary unions, which would presumably form
building blocks for the single African central
bank and currency.”[21]
In
August of 2008, “Governors of African Central
Banks convened in Kigali Serena Hotel to discuss
issues concerning the creation of three African
Union (AU) financial institutions,” following “the
AU resolution to form the African Monetary Fund
(AMF), African Central Bank (ACB) and the African
Investment Bank (AIB).” The central bank governors
“agreed that when established, the ACB would
solely issue and manage Africa's single currency
and monetary authority of the continent's
economy.”[22]
On March 2, 2009, it was reported that,
“The African Union will sign a memorandum of
understanding this month with Nigeria on the
establishment of a continental central bank,” and
that, “The institution will be based in the
Nigerian capital, Abuja, African Union
Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell
Mkwezalamba told reporters.” Further, “As an
intermediate step to the creation of the bank, the
pan- African body will establish an African
Monetary Institute within the next three years, he
said at a meeting of African economists in the
city,” and he was quoted as saying, “We have
agreed to work with the Association of African
Central Bank Governors to set up a joint technical
committee to look into the preparation of a joint
strategy.”[23]
The website for the Kenyan Ministry of
Foreign Affairs reported that, “The African Union
Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr. Maxwell
Mkwezalamba has expressed optimism for the
adoption of a common currency for Africa,” and
that the main theme discussed at the AU Commission
meeting in Kenya was, “Towards the Creation of a
Single African Currency: Review of the Creation of
a Single African Currency: Which optimal Approach
to be adopted to accelerate the creation of the
unique continental currency.”[24]
In 1999, the Fraser Institute, a
prominent and highly influential Canadian think
tank, published a report written by Economics
professor and former MP, Herbert Grubel, called,
The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics
of a North American Monetary Union. He wrote that,
“The plan for a North American Monetary Union
presented in this study is designed to include
Canada, the United States, and Mexcio,” and a
“North American Central Bank, like the European
Central Bank, will have a constitution making it
responsible only for the maintenance of price
stability and not for full employment.”[25] He
opined that, “sovereignty is not infinitely
valuable. The merit of giving up some aspects of
sovereignty should be determined by the gains
brought by such a sacrifice,” and that, “It is
important to note that in practice Canada has
given up its economic sovereignty in many areas,
the most important of which involve the World
Trade Organization (formerly the GATT), the North
American Free Trade Agreement,” as well as the
International Monetary Fund and World
Bank.[26]
Also in 1999, the C.D. Howe Institute,
another of Canada’s most prominent think tanks,
produced a report titled, From Fixing to Monetary
Union: Options for North American Currency
Integration. In this document, it was written
that, “The easiest way to broach the notion of a
NAMU [North American Monetary Union] is to view it
as the North American equivalent of the European
Monetary Union (EMU) and, by extension, the
euro.”[27] It further stated that the fact that “a
NAMU would mean the end of sovereignty in Canadian
monetary policy is clear. Most obviously, it would
mean abandoning a made-in-Canada inflation rate
for a US or NAMU inflation rate.”[28]
In May of 2007, Canada’s then Governor
of the Central Bank of Canada, David Dodge, said
that, “North America could one day embrace a
euro-style single currency,” and that, “Some
proponents have dubbed the single North American
currency the ‘amero’.” Answering questions
following his speech, Dodge said that, “a single
currency was ‘possible’.”[29]
In November of 2007, one of Canada’s
richest billionaires, Stephen Jarislowsky, also a
member of the board of the C.D. Howe Institute,
told a Canadian Parliamentary committee that,
“Canada should replace its dollar with a North
American currency, or peg it to the U.S.
greenback, to avoid the exchange rate shifts the
loonie has experienced,” and that, “I think we
have to really seriously start thinking of the
model of a continental currency just like
Europe.”[30]
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox,
while appearing on Larry King Live in 2007, was
asked a question regarding the possibility of a
common currency for Latin America, to which he
responded by saying, “Long term, very long term.
What we propose together, President Bush and
myself, it's ALCA, which is a trade union for all
of the Americas. And everything was running
fluently until Hugo Chavez came. He decided to
isolate himself. He decided to combat the idea and
destroy the idea.” Larry King then asked, “It's
going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?” to
which Fox responded, “Well, that would be long,
long term. I think the processes to go, first step
into is trading agreement. And then further on, a
new vision, like we are trying to do with
NAFTA.”[31]
In January of 2008, Herbert Grubel, the
author who coined the term “amero” for the Fraser
Institute report, wrote an article for the
Financial Post, in which he recommends fixing the
Canadian loonie to the US dollar at a fixed
exchange rate, but that there are inherent
problems with having the US Federal Reserve thus
control Canadian interest rates. He then wrote
that, “there is a solution to this lack of
credibility. In Europe, it came through the
creation of the euro and formal end of the ability
of national central banks to set interest rates.
The analogous creation of the amero is not
possible without the unlikely co-operation of the
United States. This leaves the credibility issue
to be solved by the unilateral adoption of a
currency board, which would ensure that
international payments imbalances automatically
lead to changes in Canada's money supply and
interest rates until the imbalances are ended, all
without any actions by the Bank of Canada or
influence by politicians. It would be desirable to
create simultaneously the currency board and a New
Canadian Dollar valued at par with the U.S.
dollar. With longer-run competitiveness assured at
US90¢ to the U.S. dollar.”[32]
In January of 2009, an online
publication of the Wall Street Journal, called
Market Watch, discussed the possibility of
hyperinflation of the United States dollar, and
then stated, regarding the possibility of an
amero, “On its face, while difficult to imagine,
it makes intuitive sense. The ability to combine
Canadian natural resources, American ingenuity and
cheap Mexican labor would allow North America to
compete better on a global stage.” The author
further states that, “If forward policy attempts
to induce more debt rather than allowing savings
and obligations to align, we must respect the
potential for a system shock. We may need to let a
two-tier currency gain traction if the dollar
meaningfully debases from current levels,” and
that, “If this dynamic plays out -- and I've got
no insight that it will -- the global balance of
powers would fragment into four primary regions:
North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
In such a scenario, ramifications would manifest
through social unrest and geopolitical
conflict.”[33]
A Global
Currency
The
Phoenix
In 1988, The Economist ran an article
titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they
wrote, “THIRTY years from now, Americans,
Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich
countries and some relatively poor ones will
probably be paying for their shopping with the
same currency. Prices will be quoted not in
dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let's say, the
phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies
and shoppers because it will be more convenient
than today's national currencies, which by then
will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to
economic life in the late twentieth century.”
The article stated that, “The market
crash [of 1987] taught [governments] that the
pretence of policy cooperation can be worse than
nothing, and that until real co-operation is
feasible (ie, until governments surrender some
economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg
currencies will flounder.” Amazingly the article
states that, “Several more big exchange-rate
upsets, a few more stockmarket crashes and
probably a slump or two will be needed before
politicians are willing to face squarely up to
that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of
emergency followed by patch-up followed by
emergency, stretching out far beyond 2018-except
for two things. As time passes, the damage caused
by currency instability is gradually going to
mount; and the very trends that will make it mount
are making the utopia of monetary union feasible.”
Further,
the article stated that, “The phoenix zone would
impose tight constraints on national governments.
There would be no such thing, for instance, as a
national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply
would be fixed by a new central bank, descended
perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate-and
hence, within narrow margins, each national
inflation rate-would be in its charge. Each
country could use taxes and public spending to
offset temporary falls in demand, but it would
have to borrow rather than print money to finance
its budget deficit.” The author admits that, “This
means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the
trends that make the phoenix so appealing are
taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in
a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates,
individual governments have seen their policy
independence checked by an unfriendly outside
world.”
The article concludes in stating that,
“The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of
national currencies, just as the Special Drawing
Right is today. In time, though, its value against
national currencies would cease to matter, because
people would choose it for its convenience and the
stability of its purchasing power.” The last
sentence states, “Pencil in the phoenix for around
2018, and welcome it when it
comes.”[34]
Recommendations for a Global
Currency
In 1998, the IMF Survey discussed a
speech given by James Tobin, a prominent American
economist, in which he argued that, “A single
global currency might offer a viable alternative
to the floating rate.” He further stated that,
“there was still a great need” for “lenders of
last resort.”[35]
In 1999, economist Judy Shelton
addressed the US House of Representatives
Committee on Banking and Financial Services. In
her testimony, she stated that, “The continued
expansion of free trade, the increased integration
of financial markets and the advent of electronic
commerce are all working to bring about the need
for an international monetary standard---a global
unit of account.” She further explained that,
“Regional currency unions seem to be the next step
in the evolution toward some kind of global
monetary order. Europe has already adopted a
single currency. Asia may organize into a regional
currency bloc to offer protection against
speculative assaults on the individual currencies
of weaker nations. Numerous countries in Latin
America are considering various monetary
arrangements to insulate them from financial
contagion and avoid the economic consequences of
devaluation. An important question is whether this
process of monetary evolution will be
intelligently directed or whether it will simply
be driven by events. In my opinion, political
leadership can play a decisive role in helping to
build a more orderly, rational monetary system
than the current free-for-all approach to exchange
rate relations.”
She further stated that, “As we have
seen in Europe, the sequence of development is (1)
you build a common market, and (2) you establish a
common currency. Indeed, until you have a common
currency, you don’t truly have an efficient common
market.” She concludes by stating, “Ideally, every
nation should stand willing to convert its
currency at a fixed rate into a universal reserve
asset. That would automatically create a global
monetary union based on a common unit of account.
The alternative path to a stable monetary order is
to forge a common currency anchored to an asset of
intrinsic value. While the current momentum for
dollarization should be encouraged, especially for
Mexico and Canada, in the end the stability of the
global monetary order should not rest on any
single nation.”[36]
Paul Volcker, former Governor of the
Federal Reserve Board, stated in 2000, that, “If
we are to have a truly global economy, a single
world currency makes sense.” In a speech delivered
by a member of the Executive Board of the European
Central Bank, it was stated that Paul Volcker
“might be right, and we might one day have a
single world currency. Maybe European integration,
in the same way as any other regional integration,
could be seen as a step towards the ideal
situation of a fully integrated world. If and when
this world will see the light of day is impossible
to say. However, what I can say is that this
vision seems as impossible now to most of us as a
European monetary union seemed 50 years ago, when
the process of European integration started.”[37]
In 2000, the IMF held an international
conference and published a brief report titled,
One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion?,
in which it was stated that, “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?”
It
outlines how, “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.”
The
summary states that, “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.” Further, it reported
that, “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.”[38] Keep
in mind, this document was produced by the IMF,
and so its recommendations for what it says would
likely “help” the smaller and more vulnerable
countries of the world, should be taken with a
grain – or bucket – of salt.
Economist
Robert A. Mundell has long called for a global
currency. On his website, he states that the
creation of a global currency is “a project that
would restore a needed coherence to the
international monetary system, give the
International Monetary Fund a function that would
help it to promote stability, and be a catalyst
for international harmony.” He states that, “The
benefits from a world currency would be enormous.
Prices all over the world would be denominated in
the same unit and would be kept equal in different
parts of the world to the extent that the law of
one price was allowed to work itself out. Apart
from tariffs and controls, trade between countries
would be as easy as it is between states of the
United States.”[39]
Renewed Calls
for a Global Currency
On March 16, 2009, Russia suggested
that, “the G20 summit in London in April should
start establishing a system of managing the
process of globalization and consider the
possibility of creating a supra-national reserve
currency or a ‘super-reserve currency’.” Russia
called for “the creation of a supra-national
reserve currency that will be issued by
international financial institutions,” and that,
“It looks expedient to reconsider the role of the
IMF in that process and also to determine the
possibility and need for taking measures that
would allow for the SDRs (Special Drawing Rights)
to become a super-reserve currency recognized by
the world community.”[40]
On March 23, 2009, it was reported that
China’s central bank “proposed replacing the US
dollar as the international reserve currency with
a new global system controlled by the
International Monetary Fund.” The goal would be
for the world reserve currency that is
“disconnected from individual nations and is able
to remain stable in the long run, thus removing
the inherent deficiencies caused by using
credit-based national currencies.” The chief China
economist for HSBC stated that, “This is a clear
sign that China, as the largest holder of US
dollar financial assets, is concerned about the
potential inflationary risk of the US Federal
Reserve printing money.” The Governor of the
People’s Bank of China, the central bank,
“suggested expanding the role of special drawing
rights, which were introduced by the IMF in 1969
to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate
regime but became less relevant once that
collapsed in the 1970s.” Currently, “the value of
SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the
US dollar, yen, euro and sterling – and they are
used largely as a unit of account by the IMF and
some other international organizations.”
However, “China’s proposal would expand
the basket of currencies forming the basis of SDR
valuation to all major economies and set up a
settlement system between SDRs and other
currencies so they could be used in international
trade and financial transactions. Countries would
entrust a portion of their SDR reserves to the IMF
to manage collectively on their behalf and SDRs
would gradually replace existing reserve
currencies.”[41]
On March 25,
Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former
President of the New York Federal Reserve, spoke
at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked a
question about his thoughts on the Chinese
proposal for the global reserve currency, Geithner
replied that, “I haven't read the governor's
proposal.He's a remarkably -- a very thoughtful,
very careful, distinguished central banker.Generally
find him sensible on every issue.But as I
understand his proposal, it's a proposal designed
to increase the use of the IMF's special drawing
rights.And we're actually quite open to that
suggestion.But you
should think of it as rather evolutionary,
building on the current architectures, than --
rather than -- rather than moving us to global
monetary union [Emphasis added].”[42]
In late March, it was reported that, “A
United Nations panel of economists has proposed a
new global currency reserve that would take over
the US dollar-based system used for decades by
international banks,” and that, “An independently
administered reserve currency could operate
without conflicts posed by the US dollar and keep
commodity prices more stable.”[43]
A recent article in the Economic Times
stated that, “The world is not yet ready for an
international reserve currency, but is ready to
begin the process of shifting to such a currency.
Otherwise, it would remain too vulnerable to the
hegemonic nation,” as in, the United States.[44]
Another article in the Economic Times started by
proclaiming that, “the world certainly needs an
international currency.” Further, the article
stated that, “With an unwillingness to accept
dollars and the absence of an alternative,
international payments system can go into a freeze
beyond the control of monetary authorities leading
the world economy into a Great Depression,” and
that, “In order to avoid such a calamity, the
international community should immediately revive
the idea of the Substitution Account mooted in
1971, under which official holders of dollars can
deposit their unwanted dollars in a special
account in the IMF with the values of deposits
denominated in an international currency such as
the SDR of the IMF.”[45]
Amidst fears of a falling dollar as a
result of the increased open discussion of a new
global currency, it was reported that, “The
dollar’s role as a reserve currency won’t be
threatened by a nine-fold expansion in the
International Monetary Fund’s unit of account,
according to UBS AG, ING Groep NV and Citigroup
Inc.” This was reported following the recent G20
meeting, at which, “Group of 20 leaders yesterday
gave approval for the agency to raise $250 billion
by issuing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the
artificial currency that the IMF uses to settle
accounts among its member nations. It also agreed
to put another $500 billion into the IMF’s war
chest.”[46] In other words, the large global
financial institutions came to the rhetorical
rescue of the dollar, so as not to precipitate a
crisis in its current standing, so that they can
continue with quietly forming a new global
currency.
Creating a
World Central Bank
In 1998, Jeffrey Garten wrote an
article for the New York Times advocating a
“global Fed.” Garten was former Dean of the Yale
School of Management, former Undersecretary of
Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton
administration, previously served on the White
House Council on International Economic Policy
under the Nixon administration and on the policy
planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry
Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter
administrations, former Managing Director at
Lehman Brothers, and is a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations. In his article written in 1998,
he stated that, “over time the United States set
up crucial central institutions -- the Securities
and Exchange Commission (1933), the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) and, most
important, the Federal Reserve (1913). In so
doing, America became a managed national economy.
These organizations were created to make
capitalism work, to prevent destructive business
cycles and to moderate the harsh, invisible hand
of Adam Smith.”
He then explained that, “This is what
now must occur on a global scale. The world needs
an institution that has a hand on the economic
rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a
global central bank.” He explains that, “Simply
trying to coordinate the world's powerful central
banks -- the Fed and the new European Central
Bank, for instance -- wouldn't work,” and that,
“Effective collaboration among finance ministries
and treasuries is also unlikely to materialize.
These agencies are responsible to elected
legislatures, and politics in the industrial
countries is more preoccupied with internal events
than with international stability.”
He then postulates that, “An
independent central bank with responsibility for
maintaining global financial stability is the only
way out. No one else can do what is needed: inject
more money into the system to spur growth, reduce
the sky-high debts of emerging markets, and
oversee the operations of shaky financial
institutions. A global central bank could provide
more money to the world economy when it is rapidly
losing steam.” Further, “Such a bank would play an
oversight role for banks and other financial
institutions everywhere, providing some uniform
standards for prudent lending in places like China
and Mexico. [However, t]he regulation need not be
heavy-handed.” Garten continues, “There are two
ways a global central bank could be financed. It
could have lines of credit from all central banks,
drawing on them in bad times and repaying when the
markets turn up. Alternately -- and admittedly
more difficult to carry out -- it could be
financed by a very modest tariff on all trade,
collected at the point of importation, or by a tax
on certain global financial transactions.”
Interestingly, Garten states that, “One
thing that would not be acceptable would be for
the bank to be at the mercy of short-term-oriented
legislatures.” In essence, it is not to be
accountable to the people of the world. So, he
asks the question, “To whom would a global central
bank be accountable? It would have too much power
to be governed only by technocrats, although it
must be led by the best of them. One possibility
would be to link the new bank to an enlarged Group
of Seven -- perhaps a ''G-15'' [or in today’s
context, the G20] that would include the G-7 plus
rotating members like Mexico, Brazil, South
Africa, Poland, India, China and South Korea.” He
further states that, “There would have to be very
close collaboration” between the global bank and
the Fed, and that, “The global bank would not
operate within the United States, and it would not
be able to override the decisions of our central
bank. But it could supply the missing
international ingredient -- emergency financing
for cash-starved emerging markets. It wouldn't
affect American mortgage rates, but it could help
the profitability of American multinational
companies by creating a healthier global
environment for their businesses.”[47]
In September of 2008, Jeffrey Garten
wrote an article for the Financial Times in which
he stated that, “Even if the US’s massive
financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be
followed by something even more far-reaching – the
establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to
oversee markets that have become borderless.” He
emphasized the “need for a new Global Monetary
Authority. It would set the tone for capital
markets in a way that would not be viscerally
opposed to a strong public oversight function with
rules for intervention, and would return to
capital formation the goal of economic growth and
development rather than trading for its own
sake.”
Further, the “GMA would be a reinsurer
or discounter for certain obligations held by
central banks. It would scrutinise the regulatory
activities of national authorities with more teeth
than the IMF has and oversee the implementation of
a limited number of global regulations. It would
monitor global risks and establish an effective
early warning system with more clout to sound
alarms than the BIS has.” Moreover, “The biggest
global financial companies would have to register
with the GMA and be subject to its monitoring, or
be blacklisted. That includes commercial companies
and banks, but also sovereign wealth funds,
gigantic hedge funds and private equity firms.” He
recommends that its board “include central bankers
not just from the US, UK, the eurozone and Japan,
but also China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. It would
be financed by mandatory contributions from every
capable country and from insurance-type premiums
from global financial companies – publicly listed,
government owned, and privately held
alike.”[48]
In October of 2008, it was reported
that Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack stated that, “it
may take continued international coordination to
fully unlock the credit markets and resolve the
financial crisis, perhaps even by forming a new
global body to oversee the process.”[49]
In late October of 2008, Jeffrey Garten
wrote an article for Newsweek in which he stated
that, “leaders should begin laying the groundwork
for establishing a global central bank.” He
explained that, “There was a time when the U.S.
Federal Reserve played this role [as governing
financial authority of the world], as the prime
financial institution of the world's most powerful
economy, overseeing the one global currency. But
with the growth of capital markets, the rise of
currencies like the euro and the emergence of
powerful players such as China, the shift of
wealth to Asia and the Persian Gulf and, of
course, the deep-seated problems in the American
economy itself, the Fed no longer has the
capability to lead single-handedly.”
He explains the criteria and operations
of a world central bank, saying that, “It could be
the lead regulator of big global financial
institutions, such as Citigroup or Deutsche Bank,
whose activities spill across borders,” as well as
“act as a bankruptcy court when big global banks
that operate in multiple countries need to be
restructured. It could oversee not just the big
commercial banks, such as Mitsubishi UFJ, but also
the "alternative" financial system that has
developed in recent years, consisting of hedge
funds, private-equity groups and sovereign wealth
funds—all of which are now substantially
unregulated.” Further, it “could have influence
over key exchange rates, and might lead a new
monetary conference to realign the dollar and the
yuan, for example, for one of its first missions
would be to deal with the great financial
imbalances that hang like a sword over the world
economy.”
He further postulates that, “A global
central bank would not eliminate the need for the
Federal Reserve or other national central banks,
which will still have frontline responsibility for
sound regulatory policies and monetary stability
in their respective countries. But it would have
heavy influence over them when it comes to
following policies that are compatible with global
growth and financial stability. For example, it
would work with key countries to better coordinate
national stimulus programs when the world enters a
recession, as is happening now, so that the
cumulative impact of the various national efforts
do not so dramatically overshoot that they plant
the seeds for a crisis of global inflation. This
is a big threat as government spending everywhere
goes into overdrive.”[50]
In January of 2009, it was reported
that, “one clear solution to avoid a repeat of the
problems would be the establishment of a "global
central bank" – with the IMF and World Bank being
unable to prevent the financial meltdown.” Dr.
William Overholt, senior research fellow at
Harvard's Kennedy School, formerly with the Rand
Institute, gave a speech in Dubai in which he said
that, “To avoid another crisis, we need an ability
to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that
could be achieved through some kind of global
central bank, or through the creation of a global
currency, or through global acceptance of a set of
rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement
mechanism.”[51]
Guillermo Calvo, Professor of
Economics, International and Public Affairs at
Columbia University wrote an article for VOX in
late March of 2009. Calvo is the former Chief
Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank,
and is currently a Research Associate at the
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and
President of the International Economic
Association and the former Senior Advisor in the
Research Department of the IMF.
He wrote that, “Credit availability is
not ensured by stricter financial regulation. In
fact, it can be counterproductive unless it is
accompanied by the establishment of a lender of
last resort (LOLR) that radically softens the
severity of financial crisis by providing timely
credit lines. With that aim in mind, the 20th
century saw the creation of national or regional
central banks in charge of a subset of the capital
market. It has now become apparent that the realm
of existing central banks is very limited and the
world has no institution that fulfils the
necessary global role. The IMF is moving in that
direction, but it is still too small and too
limited to adequately do so.”
He advocates that, “the first proposal
that I would like to make is that the topic of
financial regulation should be discussed together
with the issue of a global lender of last resort.”
Further, he proposed that, “international
financial institutions must be quickly endowed
with considerably more firepower to help emerging
economies through the deleveraging period.”[52]
A “New
World Order” in Banking
In March of 2008, following the
collapse of Bear Stearns, Reuters reported on a
document released by research firm CreditSights,
which said that, “Financial firms face a ‘new
world order’,” and that, “More industry
consolidation and acquisitions may follow after
JPMorgan Chase & Co.” Further, “In the event
of future consolidation, potential acquirers
identified by CreditSights include JPMorganChase,
Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, Goldman Sachs and Bank of
America.”[53]
In June of 2008, before he was Treasury
Secretary in the Obama administration, Timothy
Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve,
wrote an article for the Financial Times following
his attendance at the 2008 Bilderberg conference,
in which he wrote that, “Banks and investment
banks whose health is crucial to the global
financial system should operate under a unified
regulatory framework,” and he said that, “the US
Federal Reserve should play a "central role" in
the new regulatory framework, working closely with
supervisors in the US and around the world.”[54]
In November of 2008, The National, a
prominent United Arab Emirate newspaper, reported
on Baron David de Rothschild accompanying Prime
Minister Gordon Brown on a visit to the Middle
East, although not as a “part of the official
party” accompanying Brown. Following an interview
with the Baron, it was reported that, “Rothschild
shares most people’s view that there is a new
world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage
and there will be a new form of global
governance.”[55]
In February of 2009, the Times Online
reported that a “New world order in banking [is]
necessary,” and that, “It is increasingly evident
that the world needs a new banking system and that
it should not bear much resemblance to the one
that has failed so spectacularly.”[56] But of
course, the ones that are shaping this new banking
system are the champions of the previous banking
system. The solutions that will follow are simply
the extensions of the current system, only sped up
through the necessity posed by the current
crisis.
An Emerging
Global Government
A recent article in the Financial Post
stated that, “The danger in the present course is
that if the world moves to a “super sovereign”
reserve currency engineered by experts, such as
the “UN Commission of Experts” led by Nobel
laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, we would give
up the possibility of a spontaneous money order
and financial harmony for a centrally planned
order and the politicization of money. Such a
regime change would endanger not only the future
value of money but, more importantly, our freedom
and prosperity.”[57]
Further,
“An uncomfortable characteristic of the new world
order may well turn out to be that global income
gaps will widen because the rising powers, such as
China, India and Brazil, regard those below them
on the ladder as potential rivals.” The author
further states that, “The new world order thus
won't necessarily be any better than the old one,”
and that, “What is certain, though, is that global
affairs are going to be considerably different
from now on.”[58]
\ In April of 2009, Robert Zoellick,
President of the World Bank, said that, “If
leaders are serious about creating new global
responsibilities or governance, let them start by
modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO,
the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor
national policies.”[59]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former
Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for
International Trade in the Clinton administration,
and former managing director of Kissinger and
Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, recently wrote a book titled,
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World
They are Making, of which he is certainly a
member. When discussing the role and agenda of the
global “superclass”, he states that, “In a world
of global movements and threats that don’t present
their passports at national borders, it is no
longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to
fulfill its portion of the social
contract.”[60]
He writes that, “even the international
organizations and alliances we have today, flawed
as they are, would have seemed impossible until
recently, notably the success of the European
Union – a unitary democratic state the size of
India. The evolution and achievements of such
entities against all odds suggest not isolated
instances but an overall trend in the direction of
what Tennyson called “the Parliament of Man,” or
‘universal law’.” He states that he is “optimistic
that progress will continue to be made,” but it
will be difficult, because it “undercuts many
national and local power structures and cultural
concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock
of human civilization, namely the notion of
sovereignty.”[61]
He further writes that, “Mechanisms of
global governance are more achievable in today’s
environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often
creative with temporary solutions to urgent
problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace
a bigger and more controversial idea like real
global government.”[62]
In December of 2008, the Financial
Times ran an article written by Gideon Rachman, a
past Bilderberg attendee, who wrote that, “for the
first time in my life, I think the formation of
some sort of world government is plausible,” and
that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much
more than co-operation between nations. It would
be an entity with state-like characteristics,
backed by a body of laws. The European Union has
already set up a continental government for 27
countries, which could be a model. The EU has a
supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of
law, a large civil service and the ability to
deploy military force.”
He then asks if the European model
could “go global,” and states that there are three
reasons for thinking that may be the case. First,
he states, “it is increasingly clear that the most
difficult issues facing national governments are
international in nature: there is global warming,
a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on
terror’.” Secondly, he states that, “It could be
done,” largely as a result of the transport and
communications revolutions having “shrunk the
world.” Thirdly, this is made possible through an
awakening “change in the political atmosphere,” as
“The financial crisis and climate change are
pushing national governments towards global
solutions, even in countries such as China and the
US that are traditionally fierce guardians of
national sovereignty.”
He quoted an adviser to French
President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global
governance is just a euphemism for global
government,” and that the “core of the
international financial crisis is that we have
global financial markets and no global rule of
law.” However, Rachman states that any push
towards a global government “will be a painful,
slow process.” He then states that a key problem
in this push can be explained with an example from
the EU, which “has suffered a series of
humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for
“ever closer union” have been referred to the
voters. In general, the Union has progressed
fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed
by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed
through without direct reference to the voters.
International governance tends to be
effective, only when it is
anti-democratic. [Emphasis
added]”[63]
In November of 2008, the United States
National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US
intelligence community’s “center for midterm and
long-term strategic thinking,” released a report
that it produced in collaboration with numerous
think tanks, consulting firms, academic
institutions and hundreds of other experts, among
them are the Atlantic Council of the United
States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the
Brookings Institution, American Enterprise
Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council
on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in
London.[64]
The report, titled, Global Trends 2025:
A Transformed World, outlines the current global
political and economic trends that the world may
be going through by the year 2025. In terms of the
financial crisis, it states that solving this
“will require long-term efforts to establish a new
international system.”[65] It suggests that as the
“China-model” for development becomes increasingly
attractive, there may be a “decline in
democratization” for emerging economies,
authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies
frustrated by years of economic underperformance.”
Further, the dollar will cease to be the global
reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move
away from the dollar.”[66]
It states that the dollar will become
“something of a first among equals in a basket of
currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in
the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global
rebalancing.”[67] The report elaborates on the
construction of a new international system,
stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no
longer be the only – and often not the most
important – actors on the world stage and the
‘international system’ will have morphed to
accommodate the new reality. But the
transformation will be incomplete and uneven.”
Further, it would be “unlikely to see an
overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to
global governance. Current trends suggest that
global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of
overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts,
with shifting coalitions of member nations,
international organizations, social movements,
NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.”
It also notes that, “Most of the pressing
transnational problems – including climate change,
regulation of globalized financial markets,
migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. –
are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the
actions of individual nation-states. The need for
effective global governance will increase faster
than existing mechanisms can
respond.”[68]
The report discusses the topic of
regionalism, stating that, “Greater Asian
integration, if it occurs, could fill the vacuum
left by a weakening multilaterally based
international order but could also further
undermine that order. In the aftermath of the 1997
Asian financial crisis, a remarkable series of
pan-Asian ventures—the most significant being
ASEAN + 3—began to take root.Although
few would argue that an Asian counterpart to the
EU is a likely outcome even by 2025, if 1997 is
taken as a starting point, Asia arguably has
evolved more rapidly over the last decade than the
European integration did in its first decade(s).”
It further states that, “movement over the next 15
years toward an Asian basket of currencies—if not
an Asian currency unit as a third reserve—is more
than a theoretical possibility.”
It elaborates that, “Asian regionalism
would have global implications, possibly sparking
or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and
financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs
(North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These
blocs “would have implications for the ability to
achieve future global World Trade Organization
agreements and regional clusters could compete in
the setting of trans-regional product standards
for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property
rights, and other ‘new economy’
products.”[69]
Of great importance to address, and
reflecting similar assumptions made by Rachman in
his article advocating for a world government, is
the topic of democratization, saying that,
“advances are likely to slow and globalization
will subject many recently democratized countries
to increasing social and economic pressures that
could undermine liberal institutions.” This is
largely because “the better economic performance
of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts
among some about democracy as the best form of
government.The surveys we consulted indicated that
many East Asians put greater emphasis on good
management, including increasing standards of
livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many
well-established democracies, surveys show growing
frustration with the current workings of
democratic government and questioning among elites
over the ability of democratic governments to take
the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and
effectively with the growing number of
transnational challenges.”[70]
Conclusion
Ultimately, what this implies is that
the future of the global political economy is one
of increasing moves toward a global system of
governance, or a world government, with a world
central bank and global currency; and that,
concurrently, these developments are likely to
materialize in the face of and as a result of a
decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a
rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing
is the creation of a New World Order, composed of
a totalitarian global government structure.
In fact, the very concept of a global
currency and global central bank is authoritarian
in its very nature, as it removes any vestiges of
oversight and accountability away from the people
of the world, and toward a small, increasingly
interconnected group of international elites.
As Carroll Quigley explained in his
monumental book, Tragedy and Hope, “[T]he powers
of financial capitalism had another far-reaching
aim, nothing less than to create a world system of
financial control in private hands ableto
dominate the political system of each country and
the economy of the world as a whole. This system
was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the
central banks of the world acting in concert, by
secret agreements arrived at in frequent private
meetings and conferences. The apex of the system
was to be the Bank for International Settlements
in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and
controlled by the world’s central banks which were
themselves private corporations.”[71]
Indeed, the current “solutions” being
proposed to the global financial crisis benefit
those that caused the crisis over those that are
poised to suffer the most as a result of the
crisis: the disappearing middle classes, the
world’s dispossessed, poor, indebted people. The
proposed solutions to this crisis represent the
manifestations and actualization of the ultimate
generational goals of the global elite; and thus,
represent the least favourable conditions for the
vast majority of the world’s people.
It is imperative that the world’s
people throw their weight against these
“solutions” and usher in a new era of world order,
one of the People’s World Order; with the solution
lying in local governance and local economies, so
that the people have greater roles in determining
the future and structure of their own
political-economy, and thus, their own society.
With this alternative of localized political
economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented
global population and international
democratization of communication through the
internet, we have the means and possibility before
us to forge the most diverse manifestation of
cultures and societies that humanity has ever
known.
The answer lies in the individual’s
internalization of human power and destination,
and a rejection of the externalization of power
and human destiny to a global authority of which
all but a select few people have access to. To
internalize human power and destiny is to realize
the gift of a human mind, which has the ability to
engage in thought beyond the material, such as
food and shelter, and venture into the realm of
the conceptual. Each individual possesses – within
themselves – the ability to think critically about
themselves and their own life; now is the time to
utilize this ability with the aim of internalizing
the concepts and questions of human power and
destiny: Why are we here? Where are we going?
Where should we be going? How do we get
there?
The supposed answers to these questions
are offered to us by a tiny global elite who fear
the repercussions of what would take place if the
people of the world were to begin to answer these
questions themselves. I do not know the answers to
these questions, but I do know that the answers
lie in the human mind and spirit, that which has
overcome and will continue to overcome the
greatest of challenges to humanity, and will,
without doubt, triumph over the New World Order.
[15] ASEAN, China, Japan,
SKorea, ASEAN Makes Moves for Asian Monetary Fund.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations: May 6,
2005: http://www.aseansec.org/afp/115.htm
[27] Thomas Courchene and
Richard Harris, From Fixing to Monetary Union:
Options for North American Currency Integration.
C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999: Page 22:
[28] Thomas Courchene and
Richard Harris, From Fixing to Monetary Union:
Options for North American Currency Integration.
C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999: Page 23:
[36] Judy Shelton, Hearing
on Exchange Rate Stability in International
Finance. Testimony of Judy Shelton Before the
United States House of Representatives Committee
on Banking and Financial Services: May 21, 1999:
http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/52199she.htm
[64] NIC, Global Trends
2025: A Transformed World. The National
Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project: November,
2008: Acknowledgements: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
[71] Carroll Quigley,
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our
Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966),
324
Andrew G.
Marshall is a Research Associate of the Centre for
Research on Globalization (CRG). He is currently
studying Political Economy and History at
Simon Fraser University.
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