Author: Christopher Houghton Budd
Pages: 24
Originally published 2004

This paper argues that the step into a world currency is not as distant a prospect as one might think. The real question concerns the form it will take – whether predicated on political or economic considerations. A political world currency entails a single monolithic political construct, akin on the world scale to the concept of the European Union. An economic world currency, on the other hand, requires no agglomeration of polities, and can exist, in articulated form, as a severalty of currencies subject to a harmonised monetary approach, the essential nature of which is already implicit in the logic of accounting. The paper concludes by outlining inter-country net worth transfers as a way of accomplishing in a more conscious way what has previously been achieved through the gold standard or pegged exchange rate systems.