The Globo threatens national sovereignty

By Mary Jo Anderson

Look for your neighborhood ATM to spit out Globos, not dollars, if the United Nations has its way.

Many Americans will be stunned to learn that the United Nations has called for a single, global currency.  Similar mumbles have been made by Russia, China and India. Russian president Dimtry Medvedev tossed a prototype "united future world currency" to leaders at this summer's G-8 meeting in Italy. The supranational coin bore the motto "Unity in diversity."  Though economists agree such a prospect is at least a decade away, Americans have an opportunity to think deeply about the relationship of national sovereignty and national currency.

The premise is that the U.S. dollar is weak and unstable--too unstable to continue as the world's reserve currency. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Geneva proposed a new system of globally managed exchange rates. UNCTAD's annual Trade and Development Report represents the first time that a multinational entity has suggested that nations abandon the declining dollar.  Under a single, global currency system, nations would be forced to balance their exchange rates or "central banks would have to intervene and if not they would have to be told to do so by a multilateral institution such as the International Monetary Fund," said Detlef Kotte, an economist with UNCTAD. The U.N. report is introduced with Keynesian propositions and is distinctly anti-free market.

The intricacies of economic theories aside, the question looms: Is American sovereignty at risk if we sign on to a single global monetary authority?

Let us grant that fast growing economies like China, Brazil and India are weary of being held hostage to the U.S. Federal Reserve. After World War II, oil selling nations wanted to be paid in U.S. dollars. The rise of the dollar as a monetary standard was due in part to a fast developing global economy that needed a ready and stable means of exchange. If today that exchange is strained, is the best answer a single, global monetary authority?  A more worrisome question is what governing authority will provide the enforcement power behind global monetary control?

It is naive to assume that the Globo will be immune to political manipulation or corruption. Once mandatory monetary policy is set from outside, how independent is any nation? It is a nearly inhuman feat to design a means to regulate regulators such that they cannot favor one industrial nation over another. If a single global authority controls world economic policy, there is little to prevent the use of that sweeping authority to achieve political power and ideological control over our citizens. Imagine a nation's fiscal future held hostage to compliance with the Kyoto Protocols or submission to the U.N.'s vision for the Global Commons?  In fact, the report outlined this specific strategy in the section on climate change. "Emissions regulation and control have to be made more stringent" to achieve the U.N.'s vision of good growth. Furthermore, "climate-friendly" efforts must not be "left to market forces alone; they also require strong and internationally coordinated government action," including a reduction of  emissions  achieved by "strict regulations."  National sovereignty will have little meaning when a nation is shackled by monetary control from beyond its borders.

Mr. Medvedev, speaking at the June World Economic Forum in St. Petersburg said, "We need brand new financial institutions which will not be dominated by specific political interests and scenarios." The Russian president is acutely aware of how political interests are aligned with monetary control. The goal of UNCTAD is to harmonize the world market in order to prevent any new economic crisis. But to ensure that level of harmony necessitates a move toward totalitarian measures.  As if to illustrate this point the UNCTAD report suggests that "special drawing rights" (against the global reserves) of nations "should be made according to the needs of countries."  But who is to determine which nations have priority needs?  This is a clear precursor to a global central planning authority. In short, it is a back door to Marxism.

Pressure mounts against the dollar from rapidly expanding nations and multinational corporations. The lust for a crisis-proof monetary system blinds many to the reality that no central authority is free of corruption, much less of ideology.  Some suggest that China and India, allied with Brazil, are not true proponents of a Globo. Rather, they see the formation of a global monetary system as the vehicle to divest the world of the dollar standard.  This summer the newly formed BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) axis gathered for their initial roundtable. The primary motive for this group is its shared weight as a wedge against the dollar. After the dollar is unseated via a globalized monetary system, these nations will reestablish a national (or at least regional) currency. Brazil has already signaled its desire to conduct trade with China in their respective currencies.

Heretofore, the history of nations has resisted a global monetary unit as it is inherently opposed to sovereignty. The very purpose of the BRIC alliance is to ensure that its member nations retain more sovereignty over their country's economic future. The right to issue a national currency has always been understood as a function of states and a symbol of national identity. Currency is a pillar of national sovereignty.

The recent wrangling over the Euro is a lesson in the currency-sovereignty relationship. Some governments and their citizens are unwilling to shelve their national currency in exchange for imagined stability and efficiency. The Euro, as a regional currency, has not been an equally felicitous arrangement for all. It's not unforeseen that nations would be censored culturally as well. Some Latin nations were "softly" bribed by the World Bank and IMF to institute national birth control policies as part of development loan packages. The bribe took the form of partial debt forgiveness when nations met specified goals.

If a country is held hostage to an international system of control, it forfeits more than can be gained by an artificially controlled and enforced "stability." Eventually, market forces will find an outlet--perhaps an immense "back-market" exchange. The world economic crisis also plays into the hands of those whose vision for a globalized governing system has become tangible with the development of space-age monitoring capabilities.  A single global monetary unit is a giant step toward "world governance" that many promote as the ultimate vehicle for world peace. But peace is not synonymous with freedom. A managed, Stepford wife-like "peace" is very far from the freedom Americans now enjoy.

Freedom comes at a price. Part of the price is the development of virtue. On this Socrates offers an important reminder: “I tell you that virtue does not come from money: but from virtue comes money and all other good things to man, both to the individual and to the state.”

-Mary Jo Anderson is a journalist and coauthor of “Male and Female He Made Them: Questions and Answers on Marriage and Same-Sex Union.”