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The Ikon

Bury inflation targets and get a real monetary framework

How much agony do we have to endure first?

    To wean central banks from inflation targeting you’ll have to snatch it from them by force; they are clutching it ever more tightly to their breasts. But they must bid it a tearful goodbye. The big question is what will replace it. Mark Carney has said that: “Flexible inflation targeting is the most successful…
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Memories of Professor James Buchanan

Farewell to an heroic intellect

I first came across James Buchanan through his long-term collaborator and colleague, Professor Gordon Tullock. It must have been in 1972 or 1973. Gordon and I met by accident in Frankfurt, where I was interviewing the then president of the Bundesbank for The Banker, of which I was then editor. We had one of those…
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A five-point reform plan

An operational summary of the Ikon monetary standard

  Joseph Potvin of The Opman Company has sent me an “operational summary of the Ikon monetary standard and unit of account”, which I am pleased to share with visitors to this website. Thank you, Joseph, for going through the book so carefully and distilling the reforms it proposes in Part 4 to the global…
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Volcker, Lagarde, Rees-Mogg and the Ikon

Why a monetary standard is needed

Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times, London and doyen of British commentators, has called for a reform of the global financial system (GFS). Rees-Mogg quotes Paul Volcker, who in a recent interview described the present period as one of the most difficult in history: “This is a recession on top of a complete financial…
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The world needs a new currency

RP's Diary

The following article by Robert Pringle was published by The Christian Science Monitor on July 27. The financial crisis, the 2008/09 recession, the banking scandals that have followed, and today’s limping recovery are all linked. The common factor is the absence of a real international monetary and banking order. Only when such an order is restored will…
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