Subject: M-TH: real abstractions
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 17:39:43 -0500 ()


     To follow up my earlier post, which has so far only 
elicited lunatic ravings over on M-Sci, let me note what 
has happened since the Nixonian moves of 1971.  Basically, 
between 1945 and 1971 the world was on a dollar-gold 
standard.  It was really a dollar standard, but there 
remained a theoretical (abstract) link with gold, which was 
loosened in 1971 and broken once and for all in 1973 when 
the major currencies floated.
     A new international abstract value has emerged, the 
Special Drawing Right (SDR) of the IMF, originally forecast 
by Keynes to be "paper gold" at the Bretton Woods 
conference in 1944.  Up to 1971 an SDR equaled a US dollar. 
Since it has floated and equals a weighted average of the 
currencies of the major nations in the IMF.  This is a real 
abstraction; it is a pure unit account without physical 
existence.  There are no SDRs, but it is, in a sense, the 
highest and most globally stable measure of value in the 
world.  Of course the weighting scheme, is a social 
convention, as is thus its value.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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