by Stefan Wieler
Gold Money
Introduction
At the latest G20 meeting, China’s central bank vowed to promote the use of SDRs in the Chinese economy, just four months after the IMF decided to include the RMB as part of the currency basket underlying SDRs. Adding the RMB marks only the 5th time the Fund changed the composition of the basket since formally moving away from a gold based system in 1974. However, as history shows, the SDR has been unable to maintain value as gold has. Adding the RMB to the basket will hardly change that.