Immediately.

Editor,

I am with the Chinese on de-Americanizing the international financial system.

In "The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order," Benn Steil makes abundantly clear that the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency simply because the USA was the only one of the Allies still standing after WWII.

Harry White didn't listen to John Maynard Keynes, whose suggestion was the bancor, because he didn't have to. The U.K. was broke, and the USA was the world's greatest creditor nation. Keynes's bancor rubric would have penalized creditor nations if their balance sheets became too positive, just as the IMF and World Bank penalize debtor nations if their balance sheets become too negative.

But White wanted the U.S. balance sheet to be able grow without bound, and history has shown how efficiently "structural adjustment" -- the so-called Washington consensus enforced by the IMF -- has impoverished developing economies to the enormous benefit of, particularly, the USA.

This flaw in the international financial system, which the USA has exploited so profitably for itself and to the detriment of so many billions of human beings, is a direct consequence of Keynes's lack of leverage at Bretton Woods.

The sooner the U.S. dollar is replaced by a settlement currency like the bancor the better, and downgrading U.S. debt to B- or below because the USA is governed by idiots -- the first step -- should be undertaken immediately.

Re: "House Vote Canceled as Deadline Nears" (10/16/2013)