VIENNA: Whenever world currencies go haywire, pundits try to make sense out of chaos by focusing on factors specific to each crisis: the 1970s oil price shocks, the 1982 Latin American debt crisis, today’s Asian crisis. But the roots of these crises stem not from discrete, particular causes like war or the fall of the Shah of Iran, but rather from an oft-ignored quirk in the international financial system: the system lacks a true global currency.
VIENNA: Whenever world currencies go haywire, pundits try to make sense out of chaos by focusing on factors specific to each crisis: the 1970s oil price shocks, the 1982 Latin American debt crisis, today’s Asian crisis. But the roots of these crises stem not from discrete, particular causes like war or the fall of the Shah of Iran, but rather from an oft-ignored quirk in the international financial system: the system lacks a true global currency.