Trading and hard currencies
Talking about central banks and digital / crypto / virtual (* delete where applicable) currency, I was interested to read (in the Russia Today Business News) of an initiative to create a joint digital currency for BRIC countries and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that has been proposed by the Central Bank of Russia, according to its First Deputy Governor Olga Skorobogatova. She is reported as saying that “The introduction of a national digital currency seems to us not entirely justified from the point of view of macroeconomics” (presumably because as Russia is still quite cash-intensive the costs might not be justified and the benefits too concentrated). I can see why the alternative suggestion of a cross-border digital currency set up between trading partners would have much wider benefits.
This is not a new idea. As I discussed in my book "Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin", some years ago the then-Chancellor John Major proposed a similar concept as an alternative to the euro which at the time was labelled the hard ECU (and ignored). The hard ECU would have circulated alongside existing national currencies. It would be used by businesses and tourists. It would never exist in physical form but still be legal tender (put to one side what that actually means) in all EU member states. Thus, businesses could keep accounts in hard ECUs and trade them cross-border with minimal transaction costs, tourists could have hard ECU payment cards that they could use through the Union and so on. But each state would continue with its own national currency -- you would still be able to use Sterling notes and coins and Sterling-denominated cheques and cards -- and the cost of replacing them would have been saved.
Thus, businesses could keep accounts in hard ECUs and trade them cross-border with minimal transaction costs, tourists could have hard ECU payment cards that they could use through the Union and so on. But each state would continue with its own national currency -- you would still be able to use Sterling notes and coins and Sterling-denominated cards -- and the cost of replacing them would have been saved.
(As an aside, it wasn’t John Major’s idea. It had it’s origin a few year before in a 1983 report of the European Parliament on the European Monetary System, the EMS. The proposal was supported at the time across the political and national groups in the parliament.)
The idea of an electronic currency union to facilitate international trade has new resonance. While Bitcoin captures the media attention, there are a great many other possibilities: new community currencies, brand-based plays, commodity baskets and goodness knows what else. All of these make it an exciting time to be in the electronic money business, but they also make it unpredictable, which is why it is fun. As I say in the book, we’re not looking at a world in which some kind of new global currency takes over, but a world in which a great many communities choose the currencies that are most efficient for themselves. At it happens, one of those communities could be the European Community! Noted political theorist Marine le Pen herself has said that she could see the EU setting up another currency "like the ECU”. I’m sympathetic, obviously, because the idea of restoring the Franc while simultaneously creating a new pan-European currency makes economic sense.
If anything, however, Ms. le Pen’s proposal is not really that radical. Why have nation-state control over money at all? Why not allow regions to have their own currencies? Why not use Normandy Money? Why not have pan-national currencies? Or Islamic e-Dinars? I’m on the same page as “The Futurist Magazine” here. In September 2012, as part of a compilation of pieces about life in 2100, they said that it is quite likely that we will still have money in 2100, but it may not be issued solely by nation states. I couldn’t agree more.
Madame First Deputy Governor Skorobogatova is, incidentally, far from alone in wondering about new digital currencies at this level. Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), gave a talk on “Central Banking and Fintech” in September last year in which she said that digital currencies (of the kind proposed by Madame Deputy First Governor) could actually become more stable than fiat currencies. She says that they could be issued against “a stable basket of currencies” ( a hard SDR?) but I would extend that suggestion to a token based on a basket of commodities (or, indeed, a mixture of both) or some other “root” with long-term stability.
It’s one thing to have crackpot technologists such as me talking about augmenting and perhaps even replacing national currencies, but when people who are actually in charge of money start speculating about the same, then you do have to suspect that some things are about to change.