Revised abstract of the TIMU proposal

Eaxctly one week ago I posted the abstract for TIMU. Today you find the revised version. One of the major reason of revising the abstract is the discovery of a very similar proposal by the Irish group, Cap and Share, a representive of which I met at last year's UN Commission for Sustainable Development. Attached below are their Money Systems description and the new abstract that is going to be sent out to a dozen publications to find out their interest in the article.

MONEY SYSTEMS can be found on www.capandshare.org which deals with the "Foundations of an Economics of Sustainability", an area that transcends the foundation of the ecological sustainability of the US Society of Ecological Economists.

"Feasta believes that a radical monetary reform is one of the keys to sustainability and has a number of members working in the area. For further information, e-mail money@feasta.org. If you would like to participate in our online discussions on this topic, please visit our money forum.d out their interest." Particularly Douthwaite's post of November 19, 2008 is most up to date statement of FEASTA's position that is also brought to Pozan''s UNFCCC negotiations.

REVISED ABSTRACT

This article presents a proposal for transforming the international monetary system, i.e. the Terra International Monetary Union or TIMU system. TIMU would be an essential part of a comprehensive approach to dealing with the global economic recession and the climate crisis, while also expediting humanity’s transition into sustainable societies, the social, political and ecological relations of which will lead to greater purchasing power and quality of life not only in the global North, but especially in the global South. While reform proposals, such as Joseph Stiglitz’s “global greenback” intend to remove the US dollar as the international monetary standard between nations, the TIMU proposal adds to this the challenge of including the ecological dimension, i.e. carbon debts and credits, into their balance of payments (BOP) by adding a carbon account with terras (Latin for Earth) as the accounting unit and standard. The article outlines the fatal flaws of the present international monetary system, particularly after the collapse of the Bretton Woods architecture in August 971. As it was no longer possible to convert US currency with gold and as the mechanism to adjust surplus and deficits in the trade balances and capital flows between countries disappeared, excessive credit creation resulted, one of the major causes of the present global recession. (Eichengreen 2008; Duncan 2005; Stiglitz 2006; Douthwaite 1992.) Building on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) the article proposes an integrated monetary system where carbon accounting and allocation follow the cap-and-share proposals and the FEASTA Treaty of Noordwijk as presented by Douthwaite and Meyer. Rather than reforming the IMF, the article considers the constraints and challenges of a transformed international monetary system, where TIMU’s Global Central Bank engages in accounting, monitoring and credit creating activities that would lead to a sustainable, stable and equitable global economic system.