After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the reform of the international monetary system has entered a long road. 1976, the IMF adopted the Jamaica Agreement, which confirmed the legitimacy of the floating exchange rate system after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and continued to safeguard the principle of global multilateral free payment. Although the international standard and international reserve currency status of the US dollar have been weakened, its dominant position in the international monetary system and the international reserve function of the currency have been continued, and the original organization and functions of the IMF have also survived. However, the standards and norms under the Bretton Woods system determined by the five basic contents of the international monetary system are fragmented. Therefore, the existing international monetary system is nicknamed "non-systematic system", and the weakening of rules has led to many contradictions. Especially when the trend of financial market globalization triggered by economic globalization was further strengthened in the 1990s, many contradictions inherent in the system became increasingly prominent.
First, the idea of returning to the new gold standard.
Because of the suspicion that the so-called financial assets and physical assets have constituted an "inverted pyramid" and the "financial hegemony" caused by the US dollar acting as the world currency, some economists in developing countries think that it is necessary to return to the track of the gold standard and put forward the so-called "new gold standard" concept, that is, all countries in the world join the gold standard national alliance at the same time to unanimously determine or change the stable relationship between their currencies and gold at the same time. It is said that this not only retains the global welfare enhancement that the current financial globalization may bring, but also overcomes the capital accumulation and the virtualization of the world economy (Spencer, M; 1995) 。 Economists who hold this view come from both developing countries and left-wing economists from some developed countries, such as Harold (Ling Jiang; 1999) 。 The basic reason is: 1. As a measure of value, money must have its own value, and the current credit currency system can only lead to people's crazy pursuit of pure credit currency and uncontrolled expansion of assets; 2. At present, the amount of gold reserves is huge enough to guarantee the considerable stability of the standard currency; 3. Returning to the gold standard also means depriving developed countries of the possibility of squeezing through inflation tax and international seigniorage tax, so the new gold standard is more just; 4. The gold standard system can overcome economic nationalism more effectively. Because the currencies of various countries are actually represented by gold, there is no use of the rise and fall of the nominal exchange rate to carry out "the reality of national protectionism in trade or finance" (Shelton, J; 1998) 。
A century-long crisis and changes in the monetary system have proved that returning to the gold standard system can hardly solve any problems. 1. Although there have been many regional financial crises since1980s, none of them have turned into global economic recession or even collapse. Historically, the gold standard is not enough to ensure that the world economy avoids the threat of inflation or deflation. For example, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, Spain, and Brazil all experienced inflation in which prices rose more than 30 times under the complete gold standard; On the other hand, under the gold standard, the world economy triggered by the collapse of the financial system broke out between 1879- 1896 and 1929- 1933 (Zhong Wei; 2000) 。 2. The gold standard system is an amazing waste of human resources. The more developed the world economy is, the more amazing the global gold stock needed purely as a trading intermediary (triffin; 1997) 。 In other words, even if the globalization of financial capital under the gold standard system is more just, it is bound to make the global economic growth converge to a limit (the global gold stock that can be used as money) or collapse to a limit (which means that the development of the world economy will collapse due to the extreme lack of gold capital; Or because the progress of human technology can synthesize gold, the gold standard foundation is completely lost and collapsed). Economic financialization or virtualization is an inevitable historical process. 3. Humans have not returned to the gold standard, including Britain after World War I and America from 1933 to 1934. For example, during Roosevelt's New Deal, the United States partially adopted the so-called "compensation dollar" plan. This gold standard system allows the official price of monetary gold to be adjusted regularly to stabilize the national price level, that is, to raise the official price of gold when the price falls and to lower it when the price rises. At this time, the internationalization of financial capital is actually open to the public at the expense of the monetary stability of other countries in exchange for the price stability of their own countries (Warren, G&; Pearson, F; 1937), compared with the current international monetary system, the gold standard has no substantive fairness. The practice of returning to the gold standard in history also shows that it is impossible to try to regain the gold standard abandoned for nearly half a century.
Second, the idea of rebuilding the new Bretton Woods system.
It was put forward in the urgent appeal adopted by Schiller Institute in Germany and High International Labor Committee in Reston from February197 to February 17. The appeal was signed by Heinberg, the founder of Schiller Institute, Natalya, a member of Ukrainian National Assembly, and hundreds of political and academic celebrities from various countries, including 80 current and former members of the United States, 53 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, 17 Latin American members, 35 religious figures, 40 international trade union leaders, and heads of government and celebrities from Europe, Africa and Asia. Others who hold similar views on rebuilding the Bretton Woods system may include Nobel Prize winner Alai of France and controversial Lyndon of the United States. Laroche and others (Sanger, D; 1999) 。
The main contents of the letter are as follows: 1. At present, global financial speculation is rampant, the international financial order is chaotic, and the world is facing production recession and large-scale unemployment. The so-called reform policy enforced by the International Monetary Fund has caused serious social disasters to the former Soviet Union, eastern European countries and many Latin American and African countries. The whole international financial system is always worried about capsizing, and its political, social and military consequences are unimaginable. 2. Because the current international monetary system may threaten the whole human civilization, it is urgent to convene a new Bretton Woods conference, and all sovereign countries in the world need to take joint action to break the international financial system centered on the International Monetary Fund, establish a new international financial order, restructure global debts, and restore the fixed currency exchange rate system. The globalization of financial capital itself includes the monopoly of developed countries on international seigniorage, which makes peripheral countries become victims, and international financial institutions have no right to demand people's flesh and blood to repay debts. As the world currency, the dollar is extremely dangerous. "Not only for the people of a country, but also for the people of the world, we must now strive to abolish the financial shackles imposed on them by international monopoly financial institutions." Sovereign countries have the right to pursue independent economic policies against economic depression and provide low-cost long-term credit for large-scale investment in social infrastructure, industry and agriculture. The more extreme proposal to restore the new Bretton Woods system either declares that the world has entered a state of emergency to abolish the existing currency (Larouche, L; 2000), or call for the destruction of currency, the reconstruction of a new global managed exchange rate system and the global central bank (Sheldon, J; 1994) 。
The above view seems to ignore the historical inevitability and progress of the evolution of the monetary system itself. No matter whether the global welfare increment distribution caused by financial globalization is fair or not, it has at least led to the emergence of a global welfare increment. It is understandable to condemn the existing international monetary system and demand a new financial order based on the interests of developing countries, so as to make the global distribution of capital gains fair. However, since the current international monetary and economic system is basically a capitalist system monopolized by developed countries, then such a system must serve the world economy? Quot Under the "appeal" of developing countries, it seems difficult to solve the reform process of monetary system by the new Bretton Woods system.
Three. Reform the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
The recent reform of the international monetary system is often accompanied by sharp accusations against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Therefore, the reform of the international monetary system cannot but be linked with the reform of these international financial institutions. Taking Egyptian economist samir amin as the representative, this paper puts forward the idea of reconstructing these international organizations. In view of this idea, which often hopes to transform the IMF into a global central bank, its theoretical origin can even be traced back to Hayek 1937 "Currency Nationalism and International Stability" and McKinnon 1982 "International Criteria for Monetary Stability" (Mekinnon, R; 1984) 。 The reasons are as follows: 1. The initial goal of the International Monetary Fund is to ensure the monetary stability of the open global economy, so as to replace the faltering gold standard system before World War II. But the International Monetary Fund, like the World Bank, is designed to provide comprehensive control for the United States. The United States rejected the idea of a global central bank and replaced it with a weaker and more dependent IMF in order to control it and share the responsibility with other countries. 2. Such a system design makes it impossible for IMF to force developing countries to implement structural adjustment and prevent them from excessive debt accumulation; Nor can it ask the developed countries that manipulate it to implement effective debt relief plans. 3. Although the IMF pursues the goal of accelerating the return to currency convertibility under the most civilized conditions, its extremely brutal solution is well known, and the IMF has no real authority to stabilize the international monetary system. Other accusations are not limited to the IMF, but even include the World Bank, the WTO, the Group of Seven and the United Nations.
Based on the above analysis, samir amin believes that the reform plan should include the following contents: 1, transforming the IMF into a world central bank with the right to issue real-world currencies, which will replace the US dollar, ensure exchange rate stability, and provide developing countries with the liquidity needed for "adjustment in growth". 2. Turn the World Bank into a fund and let it absorb international capital from Germany and Japan and inject it into developing countries (not the United States). This adjustment of capital flow, which is intended to promote economic growth in developing countries, will also force the United States to reduce its huge current account deficit. 3. Review the coordination of financial policies among Europe, Japan and the United States, make the exchange rate relatively stable, and force the United States to adjust its structural deficit. At the same time, we should rebuild the organization of the third world countries according to the interdependence between the region and the world, so as to eliminate the negative impact of the current global polarization. 4. Reconstruct the United Nations system to make it a venue for political and economic negotiations, so as to promote the establishment of a coordination mechanism for financial activities and monetary policies in major regions of the world (Amin 1995).
The essence of the above ideas reflects the anxiety of developing countries about the hegemony of the US dollar and the dominant position of developed countries in the international monetary system, hoping that developed countries will share more losses from the currency crisis. But it is obvious that the current international monetary system is actually in a post-hegemonic system, hegemony leads to stability, and behind the monetary system is also the contrast of national strength (Cooper, n; 1989) 。 Perhaps what developing countries should emphasize more is the balance of rights and responsibilities between strong countries and weak countries in the monetary system. There is still a long way to go to correctly share more guiding power and discourse power in the international monetary system.
Fourthly, the idea of denationalization and combination commercialization of international currency.
Economists in some developing countries believe that since the disadvantages of the current international monetary system are related to the national credit currency (especially the US dollar) as the world currency, the most direct and bold idea is of course to denationalize the currency, which includes two schemes. First, the competitive currency issued by private financial institutions completely decouples the currency from the national credit. Let's take a look at why denationalization of currency can fundamentally solve various problems in the current financial system: 1. The deepening vulnerability of the international financial system can actually be attributed to the disadvantages of government monopoly on currency issuance. From Mendel and Mises to the so-called school of monetary legal restriction, such as N. Wallace and L. White, money is defined as the result of legal restriction, and the government regards domestic and international seigniorage income as a sacred and inviolable power. 2. The government lacks the internal motivation to restrict the issuance of money, and the abuse and monopoly of the government's right to issue money is the key to the fragility of the monetary system. The shortcut to solve these problems is the denationalization of currency issuance, that is, the privilege of issuing currency by the state is abolished and the currency is issued by private banks. Because non-nationalized currencies are free to compete, competition will lead most private currencies to withdraw from the circulation field, and only non-nationalized currencies issued by reputable multinational financial institutions will remain in the market. This proposal did not even go beyond Hayek's early thoughts (Hayek, F; 1973) 。 Second, the value currency based on combined commodities makes the currency a pure commodity-based currency. Some economists who oppose the dollar standard, like Amin, suggest creating a global currency, but also hold the commodity group standard currency. In fact, as early as 193 1, Graham had foreseen these defects and put forward suggestions for the commercialization of currency combinations. That is to say, people can use a group of basic commodities such as steel, copper (information forum), coal, wood and wheat (information forum) as the monetary basis to issue money, and the combined commodity currency issued by financial institutions replaces the credit currency, so that the currency fundamentally loses its credit characteristics and becomes the value currency mortgaged by physical capital. Naturally, there will be so-called financial asset inflation in the current monetary system, etc. Quot financial cancer has innate immunity.
It is very dangerous to take denationalization of currency as a solution to the international monetary system. Its essence is to deprive the country of the possibility of any seigniorage, and instead deliver the proceeds of seigniorage to financial institutions under market constraints, thus completely eliminating the influence that the country may gain from the globalization of financial capital on the world economy and politics. The reason why this idealistic idea is more dangerous than the current monetary system is because it is based on deep-rooted liberalism, but in fact, the effectiveness of freedom and market mechanism is limited (Buchanan, J; 1976) 。 The failure of currency denationalization reform means the overall crisis of the world financial economy, and its success means the emergence of a giant financial institution with the qualification to issue world currency. This giant financial institution can destroy almost all countries or international organizations that try to supervise themselves, and this "financial giant" can certainly not be a financial institution in developing countries.
As for the currency issued by private institutions based on commodity groups and fully mortgaged by physical capital, it may bring more problems to the monetary system than it can solve. These so-called commodity groups will not only cost a lot to set up, store and keep; In the event of a currency crisis, the monetary system will almost lose all its self-adjustment ability to the financial crisis because of the complex composition of the mortgaged commodity group as the basis of monetary value, which is difficult to divide and distribute, and in fact cannot be cashed in the corresponding currency. Therefore, the above two schemes are not promising in theory and practice.
Developing countries have also put forward many other international monetary system reform programs, the most representative of which is the Galasca Statement signed by the 1 Group and the G-24 Group, aiming at sharing the losses of the international monetary system crisis with international debtors (usually developing countries) and creditors (usually developed countries) and expanding the participation rights of developing countries in major international financial institutions. 2. The crisis area plan put forward by the Seventh East Asia Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum aims at rectifying the financial system, strengthening the supervision of global capital flows, adopting a regional monetary system, fully dollarization, and strengthening international monetary coordination. Generally speaking, the requirements of developing countries for the reform of the international monetary system are to reduce exchange rate fluctuations, enhance their solvency, and emphasize the global distribution of crisis losses. However, we have to admit that since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, human monetary system has been running in a "no system" (Biaoru Chen; 1990) 。 At present, the developed countries such as the United States have a strong voice in the international monetary field, which is not good for developing countries and is not good for preventing the currency crisis. But so far, we have neither explored nor fully foreseen a more just and stable monetary system that can replace the current international monetary system.