Philosophy begins in wonder, said Aristotle at the outset of his book “The Metaphysics” (Book I, Chapter II, line 982b12).
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Annual Meeting in Manila on 02-05 May 2012 is to discuss a range of issues related to economic and social progress for Asia and the Pacific.
Its Thursday, 03 May 2012 Governors’ Seminar “How Can Asia Respond to Global Economic Crisis and Transformation?” will discuss the needs for readjustment after the Great Recession. It will devise ways to better accommodate global economic change.
http://www.adb.org/annualmeeting/2012/Seminars/GovernorsSeminar.asp
At their 29 March 2012 New Delhi Summit, the heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, collectively known as the BRICS, attacked the developed countries for putting the global economy at risk with their easy money policies. Section 8 of their Delhi Declaration therefore called for a honest monetary system. The BRICS went on to agree on a currency swap deal which is aimed at promoting trade and investment in local currencies as well as to cut transaction costs. The deal is seen as a step towards replacing the US dollar as a reserve currency in trade between BRICS.
Even Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, the sister organisation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), applauds China’s will to internationalise the renminbi. This is strange as the IMF is the pimp of the dollar-regime.
We have to discuss the needs for readjustment after the Great Recession and to devise ways to better accommodate global economic change and transformation. Shall we discuss these needs and devise these ways in a vacuum? Shall we limit ourselves of an examination of the term “economic adjustment” and of the term “global economic change”? Or shall we seek an explanation and a solution for the crisis, explanation and solution of such a kind that the rest of the planet will also be able to consider it as ultimate and universal or all-encompassing?
Mencius (Meng-Tze) lived in China from 371 to 289 B.C. He was thus a contemporary of Aristotle who lived in Greece from 384 to 322 B.C.
Mencius studied with the great-grandson of Confucius, but such a temporal distance did not fail to inspire Mencius.
(Alfredo P. Co, “Philosophy of Ancient China”, Manila, University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 1992, reprinted 2002, p.303)
Mencius demonstrated that:
Wherever there are things and affairs, there must be their principles.
(“Book of Mencius”, Book VI, Chapter 1, point 6)
One of the principles the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) recognises is that gold is the original and proper standard in monetary affairs, but that the old gold-standard could not change human nature which dictates that no ruler can withstand the pressure to print more receipts than he has gold in reserve.
The PBoC therefore recognises that a harmonious economy must function within a fiat system, must function with fiat money or rather with a fiat currency.
A fiat currency is a currency with three minimum characteristics. Two of these characteristics are negative. Fiat currency has no intrinsic value. Fiat currency is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard. The third characteristic of fiat currency is positive. Fiat currency is declared legal tender by government.
DEBT vs. WEALTH
Nothing prevents fiat currency from having other positive characteristics.
The PBoC does not disclose its gold holdings. The World Gold Council said last February that it believed the PBoC made significant gold purchases in the final months of 2011, contributing to a surge in the country’s imports.
This may mean that the PBoC is aware of the fact that a fiat monetary unit equals debt and that the renminbi should, as a fiat unit, therefore be accompanied by a debt compensator or a value guarantor – gold. The value of this debt compensator or value guarantor should therefore be free-floating vis-à-vis the inevitable currency-debt creations. The fact that the gold reserves of the PBoC are free-floating vis-à-vis the renminbi means that even if the PBoC were to inflate the renminbi, the value of its gold reserves would not suffer. The Bank is keeping gold (the Mona Lisa) in its strong rooms (the Louvres) as a wealth reserve.
Money, as opposed to currency, is not just a name (e.g. renminbi, rupee, dinar). Money is a name for “some”-thing which has “some” buying power. It is not the name but that thing and buying power which define money.
Money needs an anchor, an anchor in reality, not in the mind. Not a nominal anchor, not an anchor in name only. Money cannot be itself the anchor if it has no reality. Money cannot be itself the anchor if it exists only in the (digital) mind. The reason why money needs an anchor is not to evoke, not to bring into the mind, the gold standard, but to anchor money by providing for a wealth reserve among the foreign-exchange reserves. Calling this process “anchoring” relates to the way that ships down anchor to keep themselves in a specific place to avoid drifting way.
Freegold may mean for the PBoC that its “super-sovereign” international currency unit has a gold component and a paper component, but that the Bank puts a “firewall” between both so that gold’s valuation as a wealth-preserving asset cannot be pulled lower by the inevitable inflation of the paper component of the circulating currencies. In Euroland it is the (quarterly) marking to market (MTM) of the gold reserves of the Eurosystem, not to the model of $42.2 like the USA central bank (originally $35 at Bretton Woods in 1944 – this was the value to which US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had increased the price of gold in 1934), by the Eurosystem which provides that wall.
Nothing prevents India, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) nor the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) from following suit.
The PBoC does not disclose its gold holdings and thus neither its gold accounting, but gold could be for the PBoC, like for the Eurosystem, an item not related to its monetary policy operations. For the PBoC, gold is trading freely behind a real firewall – like it did for the Ancients. The Bank considers gold to be a wealth asset that stands beside money, yet has no modern label or official connection to money.
The readjustment of the Asian economies after the Great Recession and better accommodation of global economic change will not be provided by a hegemonic coalition of peoples and states, but by a polity of persons developing around a currency coexisting with Freegold.
RENMINBI CONVERTIBILITY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED
In an article under the title “Regional role seen feasible for China’s renminbi”, the Manila newspaper BusinessWorld Online quoted on 03 April 2012 Lee Il Houng, the IMF’s senior resident representative in China, as saying that people may want to hold the renminbi not only for trade settlement but ultimate access to the country’s assets, and that is what “we” [the IMF?] call convertibility.
http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=TopStory&title=Regional-role-seen-feasible-for-China%E2%80%99s-renminbi&id=49440]
“Ens et verum convertuntur”, being and truth can be converted said Thomas Aquinas. (“Disputed Question on the Truth”, article 1)
Being is “that which is” (in Latin “Ens est “id quod est”). To define being in the strictest sense, is impossible, since a definition places the subject to be defined within the scope of a broader concept (its genus)
(Tomas Alvira, Luis Clavell, and Tomas Melendo, “Metaphysics”, Manila, Sinag-Tala Publishers, 1991 (first published in 1982 by the Ediciones Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona), p. 17)
Truth is ad-equation between the thing and the intellect, continued Saint Thomas. (“Disputed Question on the Truth”, article 1)
Wherever there are things and affairs there must be their principles, said Mencius (quoted above).
Being and Truth are convertible (St Thomas Aquinas, “Summa theologiae”, First Part, Question 16, Article 3)
But both Being and Truth must be something before they can be converted into each other.
Truth is founded on being. “Veritas supra ens fundatur”, said Thomas. (“Disputed Question on the Truth”, article 10)
If you want to convert your currency into renminbi to buy Chinese assets, your currency must be (backed by) something, say Freegold.
As I said above:
The readjustment of the Asian economies after the Great Recession and better accommodation of global economic change will not be provided by a hegemonic coalition of peoples and states, but by a polity of persons developing around a currency coexisting with Freegold.
In an 04 April 2012 article under the title “ADB opens ‘ASEAN+3 Bond Market Guide’ online”, the Manila television station GMA News said that:
The ASEAN+3 Bond Market Guide, aimed at encouraging more cross-border bond issuance and investment in the region’s local currency bond markets, is now available through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and AsianBondsOnline website, the band said Wednesday.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/253796/economy/finance/adb-opens-asean-3-bond-market-guide-online
ASEAN+3 is the Association of South-East Asian Nations plus the People’s Republic of China Japan, and the Republic of Korea.
(ASEAN itself has 10 members; Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.)
Does this mean that People’s Republic of China is giving non-nationals access to its bond market?
Renminbi convertibility has been achieved?
I redraft my conclusion;
The readjustment of the Asian economies after the Great Recession and better accommodation of global economic change will not be provided by a hegemonic coalition of peoples and states, but by a polity of persons developing around the RENMINBI coexisting with Freegold.
Nothing prevents India nor the GCC from following suit – Freegold rupee and Freegold dinar.
ASEAN AND THE GMM
The 03-04 April 2012 Phnom Penh ASEAN Summit adopted four documents., the “Phnom Penh Declaration on ASEAN: One Community, One Destiny”, “Phnom Penh Agenda on ASEAN Community Building”, “ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Drug-Free ASEAN 2015″, and ‘ASEAN Concept Paper on Global Movement of the Moderates (GMM)”.
http://summit.information.gov.kh/hot_news/PROutPlenaryS_20thAS.pdf
When you open ASEAN’s website, you have “UPDATES” on the opening page.
The three former documents are under the “UPDATES”,
but the “ASEAN Concept Paper on Global Movement of the Moderates (GMM)” cannot be found there.
http://www.aseansec.org/
I am only finding this:
Chairman’s Statement of the 20th ASEAN SummitPhnom Penh, 3 – 4 April 2012
SNIP
http://www.aseansec.org/documents/20th%20summit/FINAL%20Chairman%20Statement1330.pdf
Global Movement of Moderates (GMM)
96. Recognizing that moderation is an important ASEAN value and it has been successfully practiced in ASEAN since its formation in 1967, we adopted the ASEAN Concept Paper on the Global Movement of Moderates. In this regard, we looked forward to concrete activities and programmes to assist in promoting this idea and ensuring its success at the national, regional and global levels, in cooperation with other similar initiatives. UNSNIP
This “Asean Concept Paper on Global Movement of Moderates” was mooted by Malaysia’s prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
In his 17 January 2012 keynote address at the inaugural International Conference on the Global Movement of Moderates (ICGMM), Najib said that
moderation is about fighting terrorism and extremism while promoting respect of each other.
Najib continued by saying that moderation is the “FITRAH”, or essence, of humanity’s greatest heights; the solid bedrock on which all of the world’s civilisations have been built – for without it, we would long ago have succumbed to epicurean pleasures and delights! Yet moderation stands not just in the defence of willpower, discipline and restraint but of acceptance, freedom, tolerance, compassion, justice and peace.
http://www.nst.com.my/top-news/datuk-seri-najib-razak-s-full-speech-text-1.33486
Wikipedia says thar “fitra”, or “fitrah” , is an Arabic word meaning “disposition”, “nature”, “constitution”, or “instinct’” that the root is “to split or cleave”, that it implies opening up and coming out, and that the verb means “to bring forth”, “to originate”, “to knead and shape dough”
Freegold means for the PBoC that its “super-sovereign” international currency unit has a gold component and a paper component, but that the Bank puts a “FITRAH” between both so that gold’s valuation as a wealth-preserving asset cannot be pulled lower by the inevitable inflation of the paper component of the circulating currencies.
Whereas the etymology of “fitrah” is to “to split or cleave”, as Wikipedia says,
“fitrah” is the first nature, the natural condition of humanity in harmony with nature.
(Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, “A Basic Dictionary of Islam“, New Delhi, Goodwork Books, 1998, verbo “Fitra”)
The printing presses of western central bankers cannot possibly be moderated.
That’s why we need that Fitrah of Freegold between the presses and the gold reserves.
The readjustment of the Asian economies after the Great Recession and better accommodation of global economic change will not be provided by a hegemonic coalition of peoples and states, but by a polity of persons developing around the renminbi coexisting with Freegold.
Nothing prevents India nor the GCC from following suit – Freegold rupee and Freegold dinar.
Ivo Cerckel
ivocerckel@siquijor.ws
ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.
(Aristotle, “The Metaphysics”, Book I, Chapter I, at the outset)