April 25, 2016

Global Money: Past, Present, Future

Columbia University, Buell Hall (Maison Française), East Gallery

The Committee on Global Thought (CGT) presented a Global Think-in on the elusive, yet all-important topic of “Global Money.” Money is both one of the great intellectual puzzles and practical problems of the modern world. Taken at face value it appears to be one of the most basic and important expressions of state sovereignty. It defines the boundaries of national economies and their interrelationships. Printing and coining money is a closely guarded privilege of the state. And yet at moments of crisis we discover and rediscover the disconcerting fact that purchasing power in the most important currencies of the world is in fact generated in oceanic quantities beyond the boundaries of the states to which it belongs, by actors that are not the state. We live, in fact, in a world of global money. Learning how to think this radical fact is an urgent challenge, one which must by necessity be global in scope and involve both academics and the practitioners who are in the business of operating and innovating the global monetary system.

  • Introduction: Vishakha N. Desai, Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President; Senior Research Scholar, School of International and Public Affairs; Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.
  • Moderator: Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation, Columbia University.
  • Perry G. Mehrling, Professor of Economics, Barnard College; Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.
  • Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History and Director of the European Institute, Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.
  • Patricia C. Mosser, Senior Research Scholar, Faculty of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
  • Phil Prince, Managing Director and Head of Treasury, Pine River Capital Management.