by From Asad Zaman SADLY, it is true that ‘money makes the world go round’. But, it is also true that very few people understand how. This article is an attempt at explaining the basics of our global trading system. A good starting point is the Bretton-Woods conference which took place in 1944, while the Second World War was still raging. The two World Wars had drained the treasuries of the European states, making the gold standard impossible to maintain. An entirely new system had to be created to enable global trade for the post-War era. At the Bretton-Woods conference, the most sensible proposal for the global trading system was created and advocated by John Maynard Keynes. Unfortunately, the political power of the United States enabled it to quash this proposal. Instead, gold was
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from Asad Zaman
SADLY, it is true that ‘money makes the world go round’. But, it is also true that very few people understand how. This article is an attempt at explaining the basics of our global trading system.
A good starting point is the Bretton-Woods conference which took place in 1944, while the Second World War was still raging. The two World Wars had drained the treasuries of the European states, making the gold standard impossible to maintain. An entirely new system had to be created to enable global trade for the post-War era. At the Bretton-Woods conference, the most sensible proposal for the global trading system was created and advocated by John Maynard Keynes. Unfortunately, the political power of the United States enabled it to quash this proposal. Instead, gold was replaced by the dollar standard, with the proviso that dollars could be exchanged for gold.
When the Vietnam War forced the US to print an excessive amount of dollars, president Richard Nixon declared in 1971 that dollars would no longer be backed by gold, creating a brave new world of currencies without any backing. Just like a fixed exchange rate is the natural consequence of pegging currencies to dollar or gold, so too a floating exchange rate system emerges naturally when there are no pegs for any currency
Today, the dollar is at the centre of the global trading system, and is as good as gold once was. Everyone needs dollars as reserves to back up their currencies. To acquire dollars, all countries other than the US, must strive to increase exports — this is how one earns dollars. The US can increase imports just by printing dollars, while the rest of world exports goods and services to earn dollars. Because dollars are the gold of the modern financial system, the US can print money without adverse consequences. For instance, the US printed trillions of dollars to finance the Iraq war, and other trillions to bail out the financial sector from the global financial crisis that was created by it. read more