Friday, March 13, 2009

Kazakh leader calls for single global currency

Kazakhstan's president called Wednesday for the creation of a single global currency as a potential solution for the current financial turmoil.

Discussions on a currency operating under the aegis of the United Nations should be discussed at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in London, Nursultan Nazarbayev said - without detailing how this proposal might resolve the crisis.

The creation of a global currency should be put on the agenda of all major political and economic bodies, summits and forums, including the G8 and the G20," Nazarbayev said at an international economic forum in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

The world's 20 leading industrialized and emerging nations are set to meet on April 2 in London to discuss measures on coordinating a unified approach on the financial crisis.

Nazarbayev's proposal has raised eyebrows in some quarters, but the idea was embraced Wednesday by Robert Mundell, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 1999 for helping lay the theoretical groundwork for Europe's single currency.

"It would be a very good idea if the G-20 took that idea up in London," Mundell said.

Link to Forbes Article

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