Abstract
On New Year’s Day of 1970, the Acting Managing Director and a few senior officials of the International Monetary Fund met in the Fund office to bring about the first allocation of Special Drawing Rights, in an amount of SDR 3.5 billion. They could have waited for the first business day of the year, with the book entries to be made as of January first; but the symbolic importance of the event seemed to justify ‘action’ — which meant the signing of a computer print-out — on the day itself, even though it was a holiday.
The author would like to acknowledge helpful suggestions received from Warren L. Coats, W. Max Corden, Sir Joseph Gold and Peter Isard, all of the IMF.
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References
J. J. Polak,’Special Drawing Rights, The Outline of a New Facility in the Fund’, Finance and Development, IV.4 (December 1967), p. 280.
John H. Williamson, The Failure of Monetary Reform, 1971–74 (Sunbury-on-Thames, 1977).
W. M. Corden, ‘Is There an Important Role for an International Reserve Asset such as the SDR?’ in George M. von Furstenberg, ed., International Money and Credit: The Policy Roles, IMF, Washington, DC, 1983, in particular p. 226. Corden’s paper analyzes a wide range of aspects of the potential role of the SDR in the present system, which he considers at best as modest (p. 232).
Margaret G. de Vries, ‘The International Monetary Fund, 1972–78’, Vol. II, p. 881 (IMF, Washington DC, 1985).
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
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Polak, J.J. (1988). The impasse concerning the role of the SDR. In: Eizenga, W., Limburg, E.F., Polak, J.J. (eds) The Quest for National and Global Economic Stability. Financial and Monetary Policy Studies, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1389-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1389-9_12
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