Current global imbalances and the Keynes Plan. A Keynesian approach for reforming the international monetary system

This paper proposes a "logical experiment", illustrating how alternative international monetary systems may produce opposite results in the global economy. In the current organisation, "key currencies" work as international money. Keynes, by contrast, proposed that this role should be assigned to a supranational, "credit" money. While the world currently lives in an asymmetric regime, which lead to what has been defined as a "balance of financial terror", Keynes tried to achieve a more peaceful type of "international balance". I argue that the structural reform and the technical provisions proposed by the "Keynes Plan" may still - at least in principle - provide useful remedies for international disequilibria, by remedying the asymmetries of the current international payments architecture and helping to curb both inflationary and deflationary pressures on the world economy. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.