Single Currency

WORLD LEADERS CONSIDERING SINGLE CURRENCY AMIDST SEVERE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS

By Joel C. Rosenberg

www.flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com

(Washington, D.C., March 19, 2009) -- Amidst the global economic crisis in which upwards of 45% of the world's wealth has been lost in the last 18 months, talk of radically restructuring the global economic system is growing. In recent weeks, leaders in Europe, Africa and the Middle East have proposed scrapping the current economic order and going to a single common currency.

A story in yesterday's Moscow Times is creating quite a stir in particular. At the April 2nd meeting of world leaders in London (the G20), the Kremlin is reportedly set to propose a new global common currency system to replace the U.S. dollar as the international currency of choice.

The story notes that "the Kremlin's call for a common currency is not the first in recent days. Speaking at an economic conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, last week, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed a global currency called the 'acmetal' - a conflation of the words 'acme' and 'capital.' He also suggested that the Eurasian Economic Community, a loose group of five former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan and Russia, adopt a single noncash currency - the yevraz - to insulate itself from the global economic crisis…."

"Nazarbayev's proposal...garner[ed] support from at least one prominent source -- Columbia University professor Robert Mundell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999 for his role in creating the euro. Speaking at the same conference with Nazarbayev, he said the idea had 'great promise.' The Kremlin document also called for national banks and international financial institutions to diversify their foreign currency reserves. It said the global financial system should be restructured to prevent future crises and proposed holding an international conference after the G20 summit to adopt conventions on a new global financial structure."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week called for a single regional currency for 400 million Muslims in the Middle East. "The process of obtaining one single currency in the trade and exchanges among members, and in the next stages with other countries and neighbors, should be designed," the Iranian leader said March 11th.

Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi, recently elected leader of the African Union of states, is calling for a single continental currency for all of Africa and has persuaded 200 tribal leaders to call him the "King of kings." The BBC reported in February that Ghadafi "envisages a single African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans to move freely around the continent."

Now comes a new story on this morning on the Reuters news wire: "U.N. PANEL SAYS WORLD SHOULD DITCH DOLLAR."

"A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar," the story noted. "Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket. Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform. 'It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency,' he said."

The "Euro" is the model many are looking to, in part because 20% of the world's foreign exchange reserves are already held in euros. Last year, the EU celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the creation of the "euro."

These are curious developments given that scholars of Bible prophecy have long noted that according to the Scriptures, in the "last days" the world will see the emergence of an entirely new international financial architecture, complete with a single common global currency created and mandated by the leaders of Europe. The Bible indicates that eventually no one on earth will be able to engage in commerce without "buying in" to the new cashless system. The prophecy is found in Revelation 13:16-17, which reads: "And he [the world leader that emerges from a revived Europe] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one can buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name."

Cynics and skeptics have long dismissed such talk as the province of "religious nuts" and "prophecy buffs." But the discussion is now being advanced by major world leaders. It's too soon to say where this will all lead, but these are certainly developments worth watching.