Munich Personal RePEc Archive The single global currency - common cents for the world (2008 Edition) Bonpasse, Morrison Single Global Currency Assn. 19 April 2009 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/14756/ MPRA Paper No. 14756, posted 21 Apr 2009 13:55 UTC THE SINGLE GLOBAL CURRENCY Common Cents for the World 2008 Edition Morrison Bonpasse This is ecopy #1 the 2008 edition Single Global Currency Association Newcastle, Maine REVIEWS AND COMMENTS “Morrison Bonpasse, president of the Single Global Currency Association, based in Newcastle, Maine, and one of the leading proponents of a universal currency, says...that globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination. ‘The bene- fits of a single global currency far outweigh the costs, so we should start planning now and avoid further risk and crises,’ he says.... ‘The world’s existing multi-currency system must be replaced, and the IMF should explore this idea,’ Bonpasse says. ‘The only reason the IMF exists is to help the world cope with floating exchange rates.’” Gordon Platt, in December 2007, Global Finance maga- zine article, “Universal Currency Could Hold Key to Stability and Growth—Single Global Currency.” “Your book deals with a very interesting topic with a long his- tory that has attracted numerous distinguished minds, includ- ing those of Gasparo Scaruffi, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, James Meade, Milton Friedman, and Robert Mundell, among others. While some have been in favor of a single cur- rency, others against, all agree that there are costs as well as benefits associated with a single global currency, although they disagree as to their relative magnitudes. “Interesting as the debate is, this is not an area where the World Bank Group is likely to take a strong position. The Inter- national Monetary Fund has been designated as the lead agency in monetary issues and we customarily defer to them on issues that, like this, fall within the realm of their comparative advan- tage....” François Bourguignon Senior Vice President & Chief Economist World Bank, 8 June 2006, letter to the author “At Brown, Volcker discusses U.N. probe—As part of gradua- tion weekend activities, the former Fed chairman talks about the investigation he headed into the oil-for-food program in pre-war Iraq. “...The lecture, titled ‘Is the U.N. Up to Its Job?’ was among the commencement weekend activities. Brown also is awarding Volcker a doctorate of humane letters.... “At the end of his lecture, Volcker received a standing ova- tion and a request by a graduating senior for his autograph. “Then he picked up his paperback copy of Morrison Bonpasse’s The Single Global Currency, Common Cents for the World, put on his straw hat and prepared to walk.” From the Providence Journal Lynn Arditi, Providence Journal Staff Writer , Providence, Rhode Island, U.S., Sunday, 28 May 2006, at http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/bi/gold_ print.cgi “...a remarkable new book advocating a single global currency.” James W. Dean, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University, 13 October 2006 in a speech in Kyev, Ukraine, at http://www.carleton.ca/economics/ cep/cep06-07.pdf “...In The Single Global Currency: Common Cents for the World, Morrison Bonpasse, the founder and president of the Single Global Currency Association, presents a convincing case that it is a moral imperative for the world’s 191 nations to join together in a global monetary union and collectively save those economies trillions of dollars by adopting one common cur- rency. Offering readers a comprehensive, but accessible journey through this multi-layered issue, Bonpasse calls for the world to set a goal of making the transition to a single currency by 2024... “Bonpasse has a conversational style that brings the eco- nomic principles and numbers he uses to life. His stated narra- tive goal for the book is to ‘bring simplicity to a complex issue,’ and he is able to do this admirably throughout the course of 300-plus pages.... “Compared to the costs involved in creating and running this new system, the benefits he lists are impressive. He predicts that the primary benefit of the ‘euro-like’ single currency will be to promote international financial stability. Besides eliminating $400 billion in annual transaction costs, a single currency would, among other things, remove balance of payment prob- lems between countries, dispense with the high cost of main- taining foreign exchange reserves, reduce worldwide inflation, and vastly increase the value of the world’s assets. “Single Global Currency is an ambitious book—part history, part economics, part crusade for fairness—and the author does not hesitate to tell us why this issue should matter to every- body: ‘Money is made by human beings and used by all of them and should, therefore, be understood by everyone.’ The book also includes nearly a hundred pages of chapter endnotes, sup- porting references, appendices, web links, and bibliographic material about the issue. “Bonpasse is an ardent and unabashed champion of his cause, saying, ‘you may be reading the most important book you have ever read, because the topic will save the world— trillions.’ Although there are varying perspectives about the most critical challenges facing us on the planet today, this book makes an important contribution to understanding still more about the enormous benefits that would come from greater global cooperation.” Tatiana Brailovskaya Lincoln County Weekly, Maine, U.S., 26 April 2006 “...A single global currency would, according to Bonpasse, ben- efit the world’s economies by trillions of dollars since it would end transaction costs for currency trading and eliminate the need for and cost of maintaining foreign currency reserves while creating a dramatic one-time increase in global asset val- ues by removing risks of currency fluctuation. “Modeled on the Euro (the currency of the EMU, the Euro- pean Monetary Union) which it would replace along with all other currencies including the U.S. dollar, the new global cur- rency Bonpasse advocates ideally would eventually, if things were to go according to plan, become the single unifying unit of exchange, store of value, and unit of account for the entire world.... “Bonpasse’s book does a very good job explaining the costs and inconveniences of the current system of (mostly) national currencies and fluctuations in exchange rates among them. It offers reasonably plausible observations, largely based upon what success there has been so far in the development and use of the Euro, of how we might get there. It does not, however, dig very deep into the foundations of fiat money or how the mod- ern monetary system actually works and so does not engage very much the considerable obstacles on the way to the single global currency that Bonpasse promotes. “Control (or not) over its monetary system is a key element of the relative prestige and power of a nation. Monetary policies and options are intimately linked to economic, political, and military capabilities and so to national interest. Nations, espe- cially powerful nations, are no more likely to be willing to cede monetary control to an international organization than they are to cede political or military control. Absent a single global gov- ernment, no single global currency is likely to develop success- fully...”. Will Zachmann, Duxbury Clipper, Massachusetts, U.S., 17 May 2006 THE SINGLE GLOBAL CURRENCY Common Cents for the World 2008 Edition Morrison Bonpasse This is copy _________ of the 2008 edition. Single Global Currency Association Newcastle, Maine SINGLE GLOBAL CURRENCY ASSOCIATION Morrison Bonpasse, President P.O. Box 390 Newcastle, ME USA 04553 (001)-207-586-6078 [email protected] www.singleglobalcurrency.org Copyright © 2006 by Morrison Bonpasse Additions copyright © 2007 and 2008 by Morrison Bonpasse All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact Morrison Bon- passe at the address above. ISBN-13 978-0-9778426-3-6 SAN 850-5543 vi et us suppose that all countries had the same currency, Las in the progress of political improvement they one day will have.... So much of barbarism still remains in the transactions of the most civilized nations that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their own incon- venience and that of their neighbours, a peculiar currency of their own. —John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, 1848 vii CONTENTS Preface 2008 x 2006 Edition Preface xii Introduction xiv Part I: The Past to the Present 1. The Expensive, Complex, and Hazardous Multicurrency Foreign Exchange World 2 2. Coping With The Multicurrency Foreign Exchange System 51 3. Economists View the Pre-Euro Multicurrency System and Its Exchange Rate Regimes 78 Part II: The Present to the Future 4. Monetary Unions 99 PART III: The Future 5. The Single Global Currency: Origin, Benefits, and Costs 150 6. Economists View the Single Global Currency 201 7. How To Get There From Here 229 8. The Single Global Currency World-in 2024? 293 9. Conclusion 316 viii Appendix A. The Single Global Currency Association 321 Appendix B. What Citizens of The World Can Do 326 Appendix C. Author’s Afterword 332 Appendix D. Acknowledgments 339 Appendix E. Orders, Pricing, and Shipping 342 Bibliography 345 Index 387 Prices