The history of global currency and monetary issues

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Capitalism’s Currency Crises and Fetishes from Asia to United States, bosses can’t control results of their competition: By Jack Barnes, 7 November 1992, Militant, 5 October 1998. International capitalism’s stock, bond, and currency markets today are indeed becoming more and more interconnected and, partly as a result, they are also becoming more unstable.
Beyond Greed and Scarcity, by Barnard Leitaer: Interview with Barnard Leitaer, Yes!, Spring 1997. An interview with a development banker of wide experience regarding the possibilities for a new kind of current better suied to building community and sustainability.
Disarming the markets: By Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, December 1997. The money market crisis in Asia threatens the rest of the world. The globalisation of investment capital is causing universal insecurity, making a mockery of national boundaries, diminishing the power of states to uphold democracy and guarantee the wealth and prosperity of their peoples.
Greenspan Urges More Aid to Third-World Banks: By Richard W. Stevenson, The New York Times, 3 December 1997. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says that the current crisis in Asia has shown that global markets will ruthlessly batter weak financial systems. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund should do more to identify and head off banking problems in developing nations.
From the real economy to the speculative (excerpts): Remarks by Bernard Lietaer at International Forum on Globalization (IFG) seminar, [15 December 1997]. The writer focuses on the alarming increase in global currency speculation. The potential implications are truly explosive, threatening global power arrangements, the sovereignty of nation-states, and the abilities of ordinary people to survive.
Destroying national currencies: By Michel Chossudovsky, 12 January 1998. Since the onslaught of the debt crisis in the early 1980s, the IMF has played a central role in exchange rate policy often requiring indebted Third World countries to devalue their currency by 50 percent as a pre-condition for the subsequent negotiation of a loan agreement. IMF sponsored currency devaluations have invariably resulted in abrupt price hikes and a dramatic compression of real earnings.
What sank Asia? Money sloshing around the world: By Robert Kuttner, Business Week, 27 July 1998. We are learning once again the fundamental difference between free commerce in ordinary goods and free commerce in money. The latter is destabilizing and deflationary—it holds the real economy hostage to the whims of financial speculation.
Exchange rates: Regimes in a fix: By Martin Wolf, Financial Times, Wednesday 19 August 1998. Adjustable exchange rates and free capital flows do not mix. If crises are to be avoided, countries must choose between them. Some countries devalue; others default. Few do both on the same day. Russia is the exception.
Martin to call for new rules to check global money flight: By Giles Gherson and Eric Beauchesne, Southam Newspapers, The Vancouver Sun, 29 September 1998. Paul Martin will today in a major speech to Commonwealth finance ministers in Ottawa, call for closer supervision of international banks and new rules to check the destabilizing global flight of money. He will then take the Canadian action plan to arrest spreading global financial turmoil to this weekend’s G 7 finance ministers’ meeting in Washington, where he hopes for an implementation.
IMF panel likely to pass gold sales to financial debt relief: From Neil Watkins of the Preamble Center, [19 April 1999]. The IMF, at the meeting next week of world finance ministers who oversee the lender, is likely to win authorization to sell some of its $29.25 billion of gold to finance debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.
Dirty Money Foundation of US Growth and Empire—Size and Scope of Money Laundering by US Banks: By James Petras, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University, La journada [Mexico], 19 May 2001. There is a consensus that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year. Half of that money comes to the United States and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits.
Euro could outshine dollar in Indonesia: By Tony Sitathan, Asia Times, 3 April 2003. The almighty US dollar is under fire as the international currency of choice in Indonesia. Businesses, the central bank and some in government are eyeing the euro as an international transaction medium that could be less volatile in the long term and might carry less political baggage.
Bush’s Barrick Corps drops bombshell: From Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), Tuesday 10 June 2003. It can hardly be denied any more that the dollar exchange rate control mechanism, the magic invoked behind the scenes when the US talks up the dollar, has been the suppression of the price of gold by essentially short-selling massive quantities of central bank gold. The world economy is in deep doodoo.