A Metric for Money

Abstract

The argument advanced here is that money worldwide has no recognized metric, no measuring instrument that defines the value of national currencies. In place of a metric, economists have substituted price indexes and monetary policy. Unanchored to economic realities, money numbers have dispersed in ever-greater inequality. At the same time, the proper metric for money has been the center of gravity of currency exchange rates, unrecognized, the de facto world money metric, for as long as the International Monetary Fund has published the data to see it. That metric is work time. It now needs to be adopted de jure as the world money unit.