Try to name a new currency for North America.
Keep trying. There’s the euro. What about the nora?
If your lucky and creative, your name for a new currency may be noted in history because there’s important planning for a new single currency for the USA, Canada and Mexico.
Media coverage of a possible North American monetary union is not mainstream although a new single currency is part of today’s intergovernmental trade and security discussions and part of the public record in government, business and academic archives.
Neighbors can be promoted as ‘natural allies’ easily able to fuse tradition with innovation under a friendly banner, but any effort to abandon the dollar will likely lift more conspiracy theories than Texas has dirt. Nevertheless a currency unification program is on the table. Is economic integration the end of national sovereignty? Will inventing new currencies provide new powers for American banking?
Our Fed is restrained only to domestic monetary policy. Some say that if the US Fed makes no effort to renew its charter to allow a global reach in the next several years, governing the vast majority of dollars that are overseas may become impossible in this recent unfriendly climate. Perhaps merging currency can be a new method of extending reach. Cross boundary trade agreements are useful administrative improvements, but unified currencies that are continentally defined might be much more potent.
The Financial Post reports that Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said it was “possible” there could at some point be a unified North American currency similar to Europe’s euro. Dodge also pointed to the immigration and border issues saying the countries involved would have to “tear down borders in terms of labor flows” to make a joint currency work. Perhaps more coy, he reminded us about American unsteadiness – debt and Asia’s increasing wealth to purchase US debt. A bloc of three might put weight into the weakening dollar.
An abstract by Michael Chriszt discusses specific criteria for a single currency for North America as well as the pros and cons of a monetary union. His paper is part of the University of Connecticut’s IDEAS economics database, providing more than 475,000 freely browse-able papers. His conclusion is a question, probably the only conclusion when he published seven years ago, and the most likely question today: Are the NAFTA countries ready for monetary union?
Wiki’s entries about the new Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) are probably often revised while its authors argue about citations too eagerly pointing to Canada, the U.S. and Mexico becoming a ‘single country with a single currency’.
As August’s meeting to move the SPP forward takes place in Montreal, we can expect to learn more about integrating the economies of North America. The immigration bill will be completed, wage adjustments will be slowly toying with mortgage markets, and fuel spending over summer’s vacation will be slicing holiday retail projections. But the noise of daily living won’t drown the headlines. There’s a growing resistance to North America’s deep integration.