Centralisa tie van de internationale reserves

Abstract

This paper examines the essentials of the diagnosis of the present international monetary system presented by Professor R. Triffin, and of the proposals for improving it known as the “Triffin Plan”. The instability of the present system is caused by the fact that national currencies — dollar and sterling — are used as international reserves. Current increases in the world monetary gold stock meet only a fraction of the combined demand for monetary reserves. The keystone of the Triffin plan is an internationalization of the foreign exchange component of the world's monetary reserves. Relatively much attention is paid to the question of the loss of national sovereignty and to the decentralization in the Triffin plan to make his proposals more negotiable. A comparison is made with the famous Keynes plan of 1943 and other proposals for the reform of the international monetary system. Our conclusion is that neither the semiautomatic goldstandard nor the commodity reserve currency nor the flexible exchange rates can bear comparison with the Triffin plan. The proposals of Professor Posthuma are more negotiable and might be a compromise between conventional ideas and the Triffin plan.