Articles by Andrew Pickering
I am a postgraduate student of International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield, UK. My research interests include trade politics (especially the WTO), post-structuralist and post-developmentalist challenges to development theory and the global governance of the environment. I serve on the editorial board of e-International Relations and blog at http://davostoseattle.wordpress.com.
The global financial crisis has so far failed to yield a second Bretton Woods agreement, as some had hoped, but recent calls for a new global reserve currency are beginning to excite the minds of politicians, financiers and scholars alike. Taking inspiration from the ‘bancor’ currency proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944, the governor of the People’s Bank of China suggested last month that the global monetary system would benefit from revamping the role of the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights (SDRs) to create a uniform global reserve currency.
The financial and economic events of the last few weeks have shocked many of us. Indeed, they have shocked us out of our complacency and made apparent the urgent need to reform the financial sector. But more than that, there is a sense that it may now be possible to seize this moment as an opportunity to go much further.
