Conditional Currency Convertibility Based on Primary Commodities

Abstract

Practical policies are urgently needed to enable countries to reduce their vulnerability to the damaging influence of the world-wide, debt-based money system, which is the underlying cause of economic instability and financial crises in the world economy. Due to its flexibility in response to market forces, the Grondona system of conditional currency convertibility based on primary commodities can be safely implemented independently by individual countries in terms of their national currency. This chapter introduces the Grondona system and describes simulations of how it might have operated over recent years in some countries, which show the stabilizing influence that it would have on the economy of implementing countries. It also explains how implementation by each of the D-8 countries would exert a stabilizing influence on their mutual exchange-rates, thereby facilitating their collective evolution into a currency “bloc”, and so strengthening them collectively against destabilization by external shocks.