Current.com
December 28, 2009
The announcement by the United Nations this week that it will license the minting of silver and gold bullion coins bearing the UN logo may be the button that launches metal prices into orbit.
In its wide-ranging report this fall, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stated that the system of currencies and international banking practices within today’s economies were inadequate, and responsible for the present economic crisis. The report advocates that the present monetary system, wherein the dollar acts as the global reserve currency be re-examined “with urgency”.
The UNCTAD Report was the first time a major multinational institution had forwarded such a suggestion or measure, although a number of countries, including Russia and Brazil have supported replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. China’s central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan has mentioned that the dollar could become a basket of currencies instead.
The UN commission dismissed such a widening, saying a multiple-country system “may be equally unstable, and not transparent.”
The panel is seeking more monetary balance for developing countries, and a means for them to retain their reserves and domestic savings independent of foreign agencies and arrangements.
Panel Chair US economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economics laureate, has made plain that there was “a growing consensus that there are problems with the dollar reserve system. Developing countries are lending the United States trillions dollars at almost zero interest rates when they have huge needs themselves,” Stiglitz stated.
“It’s indicative of the nature of the problem. It’s a net transfer, in a sense, to the United States, a form of foreign aid.”
A report contributor, Detlef Koffe, concluded that “Replacing the dollar with a bullion currency would solve some of the problems related to the potential of countries running large deficits and would help stability,”
