Folding the US into a single global currency

There have been several suggestions by China, Brazil, Russia and other countries, and by a U.N. Commission headed by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, as well as by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for a new global reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Increasingly, the media are running stories and comments about the "demise of the dollar."

Recently, I asked the president of the Single Global Currency Association, Morrison Bonpasse, about his take on the future of the U.S. dollar and the global monetary system. In previous interviews, we've explored the idea of a single global currency.

Here's what Bonpasse had to say about the recent events and the calls to move the world's monetary system away from the U.S. dollar.

Theodore F. di Stefano: Why must the current role of the U.S. dollar be changed?

Morrison Bonpasse: As the Chinese Central Bank Governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, stated last spring when proposing a new global reserve currency, it no longer makes sense for the currency of one nation to have such a primary role as the U.S. dollar.

This statement echoes former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker's wise refrain, "A global economy requires a global currency." The U.S. dollar is one of many symbols of U.S. power after World War II and after the end of the Cold War, but we are now in an increasingly multipolar collegial world. For a global currency to be trusted and valued, it must be for today, even for this hour, and not for the past.

di Stefano: What should replace the U.S. dollar?

Bonpasse: Very simply, a single global currency, managed by a Global Central Bank within a Global Monetary Union, should succeed the dollar. Such a currency should incorporate the U.S. dollar and not just push it aside, as the dollar did to the UK pound in the 20th century. The model for the dollar's future incorporation into a monetary union was the role of the Deutschmark in the formation of the European Monetary Union.

~ more... ~