China recently called for a World Currency, or global reserve currency, to be operated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) via its Special Drawing Rights (SDR).
The governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, said that the SDR had the features and potential to act as a super-sovereign reserve currency, adding that the SDR, which is now only used between governments and international institutions, could become a widely accepted means of payment in international trade and financial transactions.
The SDR were created by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime. Today, the value of SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the US dollar, yen, euro and sterling. Zhou called for this basket to be expanded to include currencies of all major economies.
Zhou further called for the creation of financial assets denominated in the SDR and for the SDR to be used in international trade, commodities pricing, investment and corporate book-keeping.
China now holds $1.95 trillion of foreign exchange reserves and $1.4 trillion of this in U.S. Treasuries. Obviously, China is concerned about devaluation of the $US. An IMF-controlled world currency could be a major issue to be discussed at upcoming G20 meeting in London on April 2nd.
Russia may well support such an IMF-controlled currency.
In a March 16 statement, the Kremlin said: "The International Monetary Fund should investigate the possible creation of a new reserve currency, widening the list of reserve currencies or using its already existing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, as a 'superreserve currency accepted by the whole of the international community,' the Kremlin said in a statement issued on its web site," as reported by the Moscow Times.
Stock was proposed as an alternative in the article Ditch the Dollar by Sam Carana in late 2007.


Comments: 19
I expect few countries to protest against all that, despite my recommendations to shift to stock as a replacement of money. I do expect protests though, both from anarchists and from groups such as Camp for Climate Action. The latter will urge more decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which touches on the subject of Carbon Trading and the position of the World Bank. As discussed, I would like to see countries to each reduce greenhouse gases, rather than to trade their way out of this by funding projects in developing countries through the World Bank.
Please read the other featured article, the one by Carol. This is a conspiracy theory, sure, but they are deadly serious about it. They are almost at the point of picking up guns and heading for the woods.
How did it happen again, Carol? The national debt was $5.727 trillion when Bush took office as president. In September 2008, it was more than $9.849 trillion. It was the Bush administration that decided to bailout the banks, raising debt by about one trillion, so don't blame Obama for the national debt which now is just over $11 trillion. The devaluation of the $US, the collapse of property values, the recession, Bush can be blamed for all of this.
Obama instead seeks to rebuild the economy in a sustainable way, which is a radically different approach from Bush, who basically wasted both the economy and the environment, and we all have to pay the price for that disastrous Bush regime.
As to the IMF and its SDR, Obama hasn't proposed any changes from how the situation was during the Bush regime, but China's proposal to broaden the SDR makes a lot of sense. The alternative, as said, was discussed by me in the article Ditch the Dollar back in 2007.