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Mervyn King's Sinister Proposal


I'm off to bed in a minute, but I wanted to draw what little attention those I regularly bore might have left to the Governor of the Bank of England's speech the other day. It was rather predictably misidentified by most of the British press as an 'attack on the government'.

Ignore that stupid headline. The important thing is that Mervyn King came out and suggested that the International Monetary Fund be merged with the G-20. Like, permanently.

A new world currency order could then come to birth, which would manage the decline of the dollar and other western currencies, and their repayment of debt, to the export-and-savings driven East.

Instead of some replacement for the dollar (because the Americans won't be in the position the British were in when the pound declined, or faced with such an ally to hand over to) the IMF's SDR would then presumably be the focus for a new world currency board--run by a cartel of monopoly state banks backed only by faith-based paper.

There are deep imbalances in the world economy today, though at times I think them somewhat exaggerated. I'd prefer proper exchange rates or some flexible but durable backing for paper--not gold--and would have some time for the proposal.

Except that the people supporting it are the same crowd who crucified us all on an oily, coke-flecked and derivative cross two years ago.

What gives? A major figure more or less proposes an Economic League of Nations and nobody cares, or comments much?

Gott, as they say, in Himmel.

Comments

berenike said…
It's interesting watching how my granny watches news. (She is conscious of what I am about to say,and cheerfully admits to it.) It's like football. If it's connected to domestic politics, it's either good or bad. And good or bad depends almost entirely on which of the two parties it makes look better. It's nothing to do with the policies as such - my gran is, she claims, a communist, yet she supports the economically lberal party. Some years ago she voted for the ex-communists, as the most lefty party, even though she knew they would liberalise abortion, which she thinks is a terrible thing.

And journalists report things in a similar way. I don't follow politics closely, but seeing how they report stories of which I do know something (and having, from curiosity, followed up one or two small stories, to find them entirely, but entirely, fabricated), I don't see how one can get much more from the papers, except perhaps in the case of a few stories reported in depth, than an idea of what to research further.
7:41 am
Martin Meenagh said…
That's a more sensible argument than mine. I suppose that journalists are in business and have to give the advertisers what they want, and conversely bloggers (and know-alls like me) have an 'I know something you don't know' mentality. Still, I thought that Mervyn King's proposal was momentous--and yet another example of how alienated I am from the political and media class, I guess, since they are not much interested.

Many thanks for your comment.
9:08 am
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