Comments on 'the Fundamental Structure of the International Monetary System
By Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. April 2017. In Rules for International Monetary Stability edited by Michael D. Bordo and John B. Taylor, p. 186-195, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. (The link includes the final paper and my comment.) The comments, presented at the conference, "International Monetary Stability: Past, Present and Future," Hoover Institution, May 5 2016, refer also to the original paper 'Global Imbalances and Currency Wars at the ZLB,' by Ricardo J. Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. The papers model "Global imbalances," "savings gluts," "safe asset shortages," and so forth, with a dramatic "tipping point" at the zero bound. At the bound "inability to produce safe assets" in one country spills over to output gaps at another one. I outline a different world view and contrast the two worlds.