On Monday, Bank of Canada Gov. David Dodge told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that North America could one day move toward a euro-style currency.
Dodge's comments add to a growing list of comments from Canadian economists, academics and government officials supporting the idea of creating the amero as a North American common currency.
Dodge argued a common North American currency would help buffer the adverse effects of exchange rate fluctuations between the Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar.
Currently, the Canadian dollar has surged to a 30-year high against the U.S. currency, a move Dodge noted makes Canadian products a lot less competitive for export to the U.S., Canada's major foreign market.
"In the past two months alone," Dodge told the group in Chicago, "the Canadian dollar is up about 8 percent against the U.S. dollar, and is now worth more than 91 cents (U.S.)."
In October 2006, El Universal, a Mexican newspaper published in Spanish, reported in a little-noticed article the then-president-elect of Mexico and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in their first meeting together shared a vision of a future North America united under a common currency.
El Universal reported Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the separatist party Bloc Québécois commented at the October 2006 Calderon-Harper meeting in Ottawa that a unified North American currency might be necessary to compete in a global economy.
The Canadian, a progressive Canadian newspaper that supports preserving Canadian sovereignty, expressed surprise at Duceppe's support of what the paper characterized as "the amero."
The paper commented, "Mr. Duceppe and other elites of the so-called 'Québec sovereignty' movement view selling-out to U.S. based neo-cons to be much more commercially profitable than forming a new Québec nation."
WND has previously reported the initial concept paper on the amero was written by economist Herbert Grubel of Canada's Frasier Institute.
Another long-time supporter of the amero is the C. D. Howe Institute in Canada, a group that bills itself as "Canada's leading independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit economic policy research institute."
Since 1999, the Howe Institute has published several papers co-authored by Thomas J. Courchene of Queen's University and Richard G. Harris of Simon Fraser University calling on Canada to pursue a North American currency union.
WND has also reported Benn Steil, the director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, has published an article entitled "The End of National Currency" in the May/June 2007 issue of the CFR's monthly magazine, "Foreign Affairs." Steil called for countries to abandon "monetary nationalism" in favor of regional currencies more suited for competition in a global economy.
Previously, WND reported Steve Previs, a vice president at Jeffries International Ltd., in London, told CNBC Nov. 27, 2006, the amero "is the proposed new currency for the North American Community, which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico."
A video clip of the CNBC interview with Jeffries is available for viewing at YouTube.
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