ABSTRACT
Before we go on and talk about repair of the international monetary system, let me first pose the question: What is the international monetary system? My book case bulges with books carrying that title. It seems to be the default title for any recent book on international economics, including the re-issue of the 12 most admired of the Princeton Essays in International Finance. What is striking in many of these books is the often minimal effort made to define the international monetary system (Polak (1991)). Where an effort is made, the focus is almost always entirely on governments.1 I shall come to my preferred, much wider, definition a little later. Here I want to signal the widespread proprietary bias about the “system” as belonging to governments and to suggest that this bias may account for some of the disappointment in the actual working of the system.
