ERA -- A Novel Approach to Achieving Sound Money?

With not much happening in terms of major monetary system change, I did hear from Dr. Joseph Potvin recently. He updated me in regards to some potential real world experimentation with his Earth Reserve Assurance Proposal (covered some time ago here). He forwarded me a copy of his December 2023 conference paper that covers the proposal in detail. A very recent version of the proposal paper can be found here.

We have archived several different proposals for monetary system reform and this one falls into a category I would describe as creative and innovative new ideas.

Below I have pasted in the abstract for the paper that explains the proposal in general and how Dr. Potvin envisions it functioning in a real world environment.

Abstract

"This paper presents a novel approach to achieving sound money. The design can be incrementally retrofitted to any conventional currency in a multi-currency system without a central reference unit of account. Drawing upon monetary theory and elements of monetary system designs of ancient Sumer and modern Hungary, a new tradable deposit receipt security would be introduced that is indexed to changes in the capacity of ecosystems within the currency zone to produce primary commodities, relative to a base year, weighted by currency of invoicing data across jurisdictions. 

This would establish a grounded 'Money-of-Account' referent for that currency. New money creation involves a second new tradable deposit receipt security to be issued by corporations and communities that have verifiably improved the primary productive capacity of ecosystems in their currency zone. 

Central banks would be invited to redeem the securities with a special series of commemorative banknotes, to serve as Money-in-Trade valued in accordance with the Money-of-Account. With this auxiliary method, relative currency worth reflects changes in the core ecological co-determinants of economic activity. Instead of expressing ecosystem productive capacity in terms of money, this framework expresses money in terms of ecosystem productive capacity."

Will Anything Change in the Monetary System in 2024?

Now that the BRICS summit has resulted in no significant changes to the monetary system so far, a reasonable question to ask is -- Will Anything Change in 2024?

We can never make future predictions with any certainty, but the odds are that not much will change in the monetary system in 2024. The US is in another Presidential election year so the focus by those in power will be to reassure the public that all is well which suggests no major monetary system reforms will be coming from inside the system. Why change things if things are going great as they will assure the public they are under their superb leadership?

On the flip side, those seeking to replace those in power will campaign on every negative thing they can think of and attempt to convince the public that only replacing the those in power now with themselves can save us from total imminent economic destruction.

In other words, the same political rhetoric we have had for decades on both sides by those in power vs. those seeking to replace them. 

Those attempting to replace those in power now will likely promise all kinds of "transformational change". If history is any guide, very little transformational change to the system will actually happen regardless of who wins the elections. It's mostly just campaign rhetoric on both sides.

The view on this blog for years now has been that only a collapse or implosion of the present (very corrupt) monetary system will open the door for any kind of major transformational changes. Those in power always have incentive for that not to happen on their watch since the "transformational change" will be quite painful for most people and result in total loss of their credibility from the general public. They would lose their positions of power and privilege. 

Those not in power tend to revert to this same mentality once they gain power (if they win) after telling everyone disaster is on the horizon if they are not put in power. Now they will own any disaster that happens, so they revert to saying everything will be great again with no real major changes actually taking place and hope the system keeps pumping out enough money (credit) to keep things afloat and most people content.

So, our expectation here is the same as it has been for a long time. Nothing major will change in the monetary system unless it collapses and change is forced upon those in charge (or those who replace those who are in charge). The trick in politics is to hope that the timing of something bad happening in the economy or with your currency is when the other guys are in power so you can blame them. No one wants to be Herbert Hoover.

We'll continue to monitor things here, but no postings here means we don't see anything major happening that would lead to major systemic changes. Most likely, if something happens that leads to major change, it will catch most everyone by surprise including us. But we'll continue to monitor events as best we can here and alert readers if we see something real and tangible that might impact the present monetary system.