Quite simply, the risks for small peripheral countries are inherent in the system created by the European Monetary Union.

Europe s monetary union has worked remarkably well.

The 1850s was a decade of wrangling over whether to adopt a sterling monetary system or a decimal monetary system based on the US dollar.

But, as is acknowledged in the ECB s statute, it also means ensuring the smooth operation of payment systems.

EMU was designed to encourage structural reforms.

We spoke about European Monetary Union, but we didn t have it.

In 1992, during the crisis that rocked the European Monetary System, France s finance minister, Michel Sapin, spoke in parliament about how the French Revolution had used the guillotine on speculators.

Some of these warnings were inspired by deep seated doubts about European monetary unification.

Its one positive effect was to launch an effort to reform the international monetary system.

Ending the monetary union would end the European project itself, and wreak unmanageable havoc.

There has always been a close relationship between European monetary integration and global problems.

That default will be due in large part to its membership in the European Monetary Union.

There is no reason why the same should not be true of its international monetary system.

The international monetary and financial system has witnessed tremendous change over the recent decades.

The US enjoys a privileged role in the international monetary system as issuer of the world s de facto reserve currency.

In 1971, the technical issue concerned the role of the dollar in the international monetary system.

There are two ways in which the dollar s role in the international monetary system can be reduced.

It makes sense that the international monetary system should follow the global economy in becoming more multipolar.

The European Monetary System began as a high level reaction to global currency chaos, and in particular to the depreciation of the dollar in 1977 and 1978, which seemed to threaten its continued role as the major international reserve currency.

The EU s Economic and Monetary Union was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The other school, by contrast, worried that the existing monetary system was rigid, brittle, and prone to crisis.

Rather, the banking system is at the brink of insolvency, with a permanent loss in equity capital.

Other ideas, like moving to fiscal union, would require a fundamental revision of the EU s founding treaties.

Staff and management should be tasked with producing a biannual report on the international monetary system.

It is not that the end of European Monetary Union is on the agenda it is merely that people have begun thinking about possible low probability futures in which the end of EMU might be placed on the agenda.

Europe has lost its implicit claim to be the best source of serious people with the experience needed to run the international monetary system.

Given that financial integration is particularly strong within the monetary union, putting the ECB in charge was an obvious choice.

Europe learned the same lesson with the move to monetary union and the creation of the European Central Bank to manage its new currency, the euro.

Everybody accepted if grudgingly that the bare bones EMU was the only game in town.

The Nobel laureate economist Robert Mundell once compared a monetary regime to a political constitution, because it establishes the rules of the game. The analogy is apt.

It is part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).

The framework for US macroeconomic policy changed dramatically when the international monetary system broke down in 1971.

The architects of the Bretton Woods regime kept this lesson in mind when they redesigned the world s monetary system in 1944.

Twice in the twentieth century in 1931 and again in 1969 70 France helped to bring down the world monetary system.

Atari Inc. simply did not have the cash flow to complete the system quickly, given that sales of their own Pong systems were cooling.

The ECB s paltry rate hike in December, together with the supine promise of no plans for further monetary tightening, demonstrates that Trichet is no Duisenberg.

The country qualified for the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU) in 1998 and joined with 10 other European countries in launching the euro on 1 January 1999.

Last but not least, the international monetary system requires governance reform, which includes giving a stronger voice to emerging and developing countries.

The Nobel laureate economist Robert Mundell once compared a monetary regime to a political constitution, because it establishes the rules of the game.

In 1979, when West Germany adopted a fixed exchange rate regime with a support mechanism for its partners (the European Monetary System), the Bundesbank ensured that it was not committed to unlimited currency interventions and that it might stop when the stability of the Deutsche Mark was endangered.

Since the international monetary system has experienced few changes historically, the effort to revamp it is bound to be a long march.

NEW YORK Both China and the United Nations Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System have called for a new global reserve system.

Unfortunately, it also indicates how ambitious and challenging a task it is to reform the international monetary order.

The system was first used in the 2009 election of Members of the European Parliament.

But the European Council also created a Task Force under President Herman Van Rompuy to elaborate concrete proposals for reforming the monetary union.