The World in Words
A New World Architecture
George Soros
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NEW YORK – Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism. The former, represented by the United States, has broken down, and the latter, represented by China, is on the rise. Following the path of least resistance will lead to the gradual disintegration of the international financial system. A new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented.
While international cooperation on regulatory reform is difficult to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order. A new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture, is needed to establish new international rules, including treatment of financial institutions that are too big to fail and the role of capital controls. It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.
In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system. The post-war order, which made the US more equal than others, produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.
The US ought not to shy away from wider use of IMF Special Drawing Rights. Because SDRs are denominated in several national currencies, no single currency would enjoy an unfair advantage.
The range of currencies included in the SDRs would have to be widened, and some of the newly added currencies, including the renminbi, may not be fully convertible. This would, however, allow the international community to press China to abandon its exchange-rate peg to the dollar and would be the best way to reduce international imbalances. And the dollar could still remain the preferred reserve currency, provided it is prudently managed.
One great advantage of SDRs is that they permit the international creation of money, which is particularly useful at times like the present. The money could be directed to where it is most needed, unlike what is happening currently. A mechanism that allows rich countries that don’t need additional reserves to transfer their allocations to those that do is readily available, using the IMF’s gold reserves.
Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council. That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.
The system cannot survive in its present form, and the US has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The US is still in a position to lead the world, but, without far-sighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush’s administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form.
The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix. We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did.
In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality. President Barack Obama has deployed the “confidence multiplier” and claims to have contained the recession. But if there is a “double dip” recession, Americans will become susceptible to all kinds of fear mongering and populist demagogy. If Obama fails, the next administration will be sorely tempted to create some diversion from troubles at home – at great peril to the world.
Obama has the right vision. He believes in international cooperation, rather than the might-is-right philosophy of the Bush-Cheney era. The emergence of the G-20 as the primary forum of international cooperation and the peer-review process agreed in Pittsburgh are steps in the right direction.
What is lacking, however, is a general recognition that the system is broken and needs to be reinvented. After all, the financial system did not collapse altogether, and the Obama administration made a conscious decision to revive banks with hidden subsidies rather than to recapitalize them on a compulsory basis. Those institutions that survived will hold a stronger market position than ever, and they will resist a systematic overhaul. Obama is preoccupied by many pressing problems, and reinventing the international financial system is unlikely to receive his full attention.
China’s leadership needs to be even more far-sighted than Obama is. China is replacing the American consumer as the motor of the world economy. Since it is a smaller motor, the world economy will grow slower, but China’s influence will rise very fast.
For the time being, the Chinese public is willing to subordinate its individual freedom to political stability and economic advancement. But that may not continue indefinitely – and the rest of the world will never subordinate its freedom to the prosperity of the Chinese state.
As China becomes a world leader, it must transform itself into a more open society that the rest of the world is willing to accept as a world leader. Military power relations being what they are, China has no alternative to peaceful, harmonious development. Indeed, the future of the world depends on it.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link: http://media.blubrry.com/ps/media.libsyn.com/media/ps/20091103Soros.mp3
AlanDR 11:24 10 Nov 09
America has considerable short term problems; however, what makes these problems linger is liberal organizations attempts to regulate. Let the weak crumble and the strong excel. If we just let capitalism work these problems will self-correct in painful BUT short order. The world is a very competitive environment at every level. The only time that an imbalance becomes acute is when attempts are made to regulate competition out of it. Every time socialism creeps in, prosperity runs out!
Now I know Mr Soros wants a new world order where he and his friends control all wealth and power. He is frantically trying to get President Obama on board which he probably will, but he will never get the true capitalist, whether it be China, India, Korea, or the billions of individuals who are not willing to turnover their future to a handful of mediocre bureaucrats. Sorry George - not interested!
acd 04:49 11 Nov 09
-the problems were created by the same people who would like to solve it... deceptive... who here trusts a liar?... its simple logic.
brodix 07:51 11 Nov 09
The simple fact is that capital is subject to the law of supply and demand. Since supply is potentially infinite, it is demand, prudent borrowers, who determine how much notational wealth the economy can hold. We avoid this natural limit on wealth by creating artificial demand, either by lowering loan standards, or creating extraneous circulation through increasingly complex "securities." Meanwhile those in control of this monetary illusion can only invest their enormous wealth by loaning it back to those whom they squeezed it out of in the first place, either directly, or as government debt.
Monarchs neglected their duties to society and lost their privileges as a result. Bankers will suffer the same fate. As responsibility for maintaining the value of the currency has been shifted to the taxpayer, so should the profits from its management. A public banking system would be incorporated at the local level and profits would fund services in the communities which create the wealth. These local banks would then be shareholders in regional and state banks, which would oversee a national bank that would be responsible for the currency.
Economic growth, like democracy, is bottom up, not top down.
A related problem is the system of public financing, where enormous bills, stuffed with enough goodies to gain sufficient support, are rammed through the system. That's not budgeting. The process of budgeting is to prioritize needs and desires, then decide where to draw the line between what can be afforded and what cannot. In the US, some years ago, there was a discussion about the "line item veto," where the president could delete any item he wished from spending bills. Obviously this would remove all power of the purse from the legislature and likely be unconstitutional. In the spirit of actual budgeting, a possible solution would be to break these bills down to their constituent lines and then have every legislator assign a percentage value to each line and then re-assemble them in order of preference. The president would then draw the line at what would be funded. This would divide responsibility, allowing the legislature to prioritize, while giving the president final authority over total spending. Since making the cut would be graded on a curve, there would be much less incentive to trade favors and the percentage system would allow legislators to fine tune their granting of favors to other legislators and lobbyists. Since local spending by the national government would be reduced, a local public banking system which recycled wealth back into local infrastructure would fill the hole.
spottery2k 09:18 11 Nov 09
George (may I call you George?) Everybody's got an idea for a new system of one form or another, but in the end it will still need people to run it. The problem with economics as a social science is that it only measures the transfer of wealth among individuals and groups under the misguided notion that it is measuring prosperity and despair, and economist look all the more foolish when they sing the praises of a booming index and indicators amidst a catastrophic job market.
Its pretty sad to think that in this day and age that people do not take seriously their responsibility to their communities as "movers and shakers" of those communities. Even the wealthy have a way of forgetting or revising the past. There was a time when the fact that government and wealth go hand in hand wasn't such a strange notion. For kings and emperors the word was also law and what passed for governing would be called corruption today. As the less privileged public became more literate with the advent of the printing press it would be within 3 centuries that a wave of revolutions would sweep through Europe and the new world, largely influenced by the new mechanistic view introduced by Newton in an attempt to create a unimpassioned and just "system" respectful of even the least privileged among us. The idea was sound, but only made it easier for the unscrupulous to gain wealth and direct the misery and disaffection of the public towards a system-scarecrow. The people would trade their belief in God for the belief in a system comprised only of people wearing hats. There was never any real separation between wealth and power so long as private wealth could concentrate in the hands of the few who would finance a firewall of disposable politicians in ritual effigy every few years to an ignorant public.
Phasor 09:58 12 Nov 09
30+ years of conservative values in US government policy with reliance of market principles and deregulation and what did we get...
The precipice of collapse of the entire economy, a de-industrialized America, soaring unemployment, increased homelessness and exacerbated income inequality.
And those commenting here want to keep going down this road? You conservatives are devoid of reality. At least, Soros wants to take a new road as do I.
MorrisonBonpasse 02:02 16 Nov 09
Mr. Soros is correct that the world's monetary system must be reformed. In his book, "The Alchemy of Finance," he wrote correctly of the need for a Single Global Currency which would achieve far more than the increased use of SDR's (IMF Special Drawing Rights).
Expanding the use of SDR's, which is not a currency as commonly understood by the people of the world, would only prolong the life of the existing dysfunctional multicurrency system. One key to the value of money is that it be trusted, and the people of the world will not trust something they cannot see or hold.
The world AND the U.S. will be better off when the U.S. Dollar is replaced by, and incorporated into, a Single Global Currency, managed by a Global Central Bank within a Global Monetary Union. In Europe, 16 countries are using one currency. The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union supports 8 countries, and the West African franc is used in 13 countries. Why not a monetary union for the 192 U.N. members? A Single Global Currency will provide the people of the world what they want - stable money, and they will trust that money when they can see it and hold it in their hands.
We don't need to wait for the further decline, and perhaps rapid decline, of the dollar to start planning for the Single Global Currency.
The primary problem with the euro and currencies of other monetary unions is that they still must co-exist within the international multicurrency system itself where the value of those common currencies must still fluctuate in value against each other. With a Single Global Currency, there are no such fluctuations, by definition.
In addition to eliminating currency fluctuations, the use of a Single Global Currency would eliminate the current foreign exchange trading expense of $400 billion annually, eliminate currency risk, eliminate current account imbalances, and eliminate the need for foreign exchange reserves.
With a Global Central Bank with a primary goal of monetary stability, global inflation would likely be lower.
The world should begin researching and planning now for a Single Global Currency, which will save the world - literally: trillions.
The Single Global Currency Assn., which was founded in 2003, promotes the implementation of a Single Global Currency by 2024, now only 15 years away, and the 80th anniversary of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. We will reach that point through the creation, expansion and merger of currencies of monetary unions. This process will be enhanced by holding international monetary conferences, as was held in 1944. At some point, the U.S. dollar, pound, yen, and/or yuan will join a monetary union. When a monetary union currency supports a currency area of 40-50% of the world's GDP, that currency will have achieved the "tipping point" and it will be anointed the Single Global Currency. After that, the other currencies of the world will seek to join that currency.
The Single Global Currency Association's website is www.singleglobalcurrency.org. See, also, the Assn.'s book, "The Single Global Currency - Common Cents for the World," and the ICFAI University Press book, "A Single Global Currency - Perspectives and Challenges."
NimrodsBane 04:55 17 Nov 09
This New Global Architecture...?
it wouldn't happen to be in the shape of a 'pyramid' would it?
hsgross 02:40 10 Nov 09
A great opportunity for promoting longterm geo-political stability!