|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Thursday, October 21, 1999 The Cato Institute The distinctive characteristic of all monetary regimes today is the lack of any real anchor for the domestic price level. All currencies are government fiat monies whose values are determined ultimately by discretionary central banks. Countries that have pegged their currencies to the dollar have benefited from low U.S. inflation, but there is no guarantee of future price stability. At the Cato Institute’s 17th Annual Monetary Conference, leading policy-makers and monetary experts will discuss the current global monetary order and proposals for improving that order. Those proposals range from dollarization to a new Bretton Woods system to private competing currencies. Important questions will be raised about the Federal Reserve’s ability to control the money supply in a global economy, the future of the yen and the euro, the role of the IMF as an international lender of last resort, whether dollarization would benefit Latin America, and whether deflation is a threat to global financial markets. The fundamental question, however, is whether we should rely more on monetary rules or on discretionary central banks. Since monetary disturbances can wreak havoc on economic decisions, the choice of monetary institutions has important implications for long-run prosperity and freedom.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
