Dream of Universal Currency Just Won’t Die

By David Wolman

The euro zone maelstrom refuses to end. Thanks to the debt crisis, some Greek officials are contemplating dumping the common currency for the drachma. Meanwhile, Italy and Spain teeter. A decade after the shared currency was heralded as a 21st-century tool for peace and prosperity, it turns out that currency unions aren’t such a hot idea.

Not so fast, though. This is undeniably a period of epic turmoil, and many economists will tell you that sovereign states need sovereign currencies—full stop. But this notion ignores a fundamental truth: Countries with their own currency may have monetary independence, but in reality—as gun battles in Libya, CDOs in the US, and tsunamis in Japan have taught us—we are only becoming more economically intertwined, regardless of what our coins look like.

Step back from the current crisis to consider the long view, and currency unions—or even a single global currency—have a fair share of appeal. A universal medium of exchange could eliminate currency risk and jack up trade. It would mean speculators couldn’t short an individual country’s currency. Exporters wouldn’t have to fret over the gap between a price on a contract and the value of the payment. A single currency could halt spastic swings in prices and end conversion fees, leaving more of the pie for little stuff like R&D and employee health insurance. Oh—and it could put an end to international disputes over currency manipulation. Hello? China?

True, sovereign currencies afford the ability to manipulate the money supply, jiggle the handle of interest rates, and buy up piles of toxic assets. When a boom goes bust, devaluing currency is the least bad way for governments to rein in wages and prices that are suddenly too high. But if you use the same currency as another country that isn’t in dire straits, good luck convincing them to accept devaluation on your nation’s behalf. (This is part of the reason for the euro zone impasse.)

But does this mean we don’t see a global currency in our future? For many, the answer is no. A recent Pew Research poll reveals that 41 percent of Americans expect it by 2050. Maybe the idea has been planted in our heads by leftist utopians and science fiction authors: a system of “credits” is used in everything from Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 to the Foundation book series. Yet the idea has also been touted by economics titans like John Maynard Keynes.

The fact is, the modern economy and monetary system are too damn precarious for us not to examine every possible way to protect against future shocks—including going all in on a universal currency. It’s a bit like geoengineering: radical and outrageous at first blush but, given humanity’s current predicament, not as outrageous as dismissing it out of hand.

Some pundits insist that gold could do the trick or that we could achieve many of the benefits of a global currency by tying the value of national ones to a set amount of the shiny stuff. But most economists view a return to gold as anachronistic, absurd, and even hazardous. Maybe, but it’s possible they’re saying so because reviving the gold standard is so incongruous with the present and not necessarily because reordaining gold would result in a system inferior to today’s tumultuous one.

Of course, the universal currency could be the US dollar, and in some ways that’s already the case. The greenback is what central banks hold the most of on reserve, and it’s the currency used for the vast majority of international transactions. But the dollar’s special status seems less stable than ever—and will worsen if Washington can’t overcome its paralysis to deal with the debt.

Perhaps the seed for that universal currency has already been planted. The International Monetary Fund uses something called Special Drawing Rights, a crossbreed of four of the world’s key currencies, to make certain kinds of settlements between IMF members. Could SDR someday morph into the One Coin to Rule Them All? If so, some lucky designer will have a field day mashing up $, ¥, £, and, yes, €.

A global currency may indeed prove to be a vision best left in the realm of fantasy. But it would behoove us to seriously analyze the pros and cons before ditching the idea in favor of today’s smorgasbord of euros, pesos, yuan, and Malawi kwacha.

Iran: Ahmadinejad says sanctions will be met with 'force'

Tehran, 2 Jan. (AKI) - The Iranian Central Bank will respond to new sanctions imposed by the United States "with force, "Iranian president Ahmadinejad told an annual meeting of senior central bank officials on Monday, according to state media.

US president Barack Obama on Saturday signed into law a defense bill that included sanctions on the Iranian central bank in response to Iran's refusal to curb its nuclear program which the West believes is for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Iran denies it has a nuclear arms program.

Separately, Iran is flexing its muscles in response to Western moves to isolate it economically.

Iran's deputy Navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi told the official news agency IRNA. on Monday it had conducted a successful test of a long-range missile during its naval exercise in the Gulf.

"We have test fired a long-range shore-to-sea missile called Qader, which managed to successfully destroy predetermined targets in the Gulf," Mousavi said in the report

The Euroepan Union says it may follow the US's lead by imposing an import ban on Iranian crude oil.

A fabric 'stronger than steel': Scientists crack how to 'farm' spider's webs by making silkworms do the work

By Daily Mail Reporter

Scientists have genetically engineered silkworms to make artificial spider silk.

It is hoped the breakthrough could lead to the development of stronger fibres for textiles, bandages for burn victims and bullet-proof vests.

The GM silkworms spin tough fibres containing spider silk proteins that are more elastic and extensible, making it more suitable for use in a range of medical applications.

Territorialism and cannibalism among spiders pose challenges to spider farming as a viable means of manufacturing silk.

Dr Donald Jarvis, of the University of Wyoming in the United States, and colleagues created transgenic silkworms expressing spider gene sequences.

Spider silk proteins have been long produced in transgenic bacterial, yeast, plant, insect and mammalian cells.

However, previous attempts to incorporate them into fibres spun by silkworms led to relatively low yields.

But the new technique, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led to fibres at least as tough as spider silk and stronger than those spun by silkworms.

So silkworms may be used at factories for manufacturing tough silk fibres containing spider silk proteins, said the researchers.

Dr Jarvis said: 'Spider silks have enormous potential as biomaterials for various applications, but serious obstacles to spider farming preclude the natural manufacturing approach.

'Thus, there is a need to develop an effective biotechnological approach for spider silk fibre production.

'In addition to being used as sutures, silk fibres hold great potential as biomaterials for wound dressings, artificial ligaments, tendons, tissue scaffolds, microcapsules, and other applications.

'Silkworms are the current biological source of silk sutures, but spider silk fibres have superior mechanical properties that are ideal for procedures requiring finer sutures, such as ocular, neurological, and cosmetic surgeries.

'These results demonstrate that silkworms can be engineered to manufacture composite silk fibres containing stably integrated spider silk protein sequences, which significantly improve the overall mechanical properties of the parental silkworm silk fibres.

Could hypersonic flight become a reality?

By Stephanie Hegarty / BBC World Service

When Concorde was decommissioned in 2003, supersonic air travel became a thing of the past. But work has begun on a passenger aircraft that could go further and faster - flying from Europe to Australia in four hours. Will it ever become a reality?

The European Space Agency's goal is to create a hypersonic passenger plane, one that flies more than five times faster than the speed of sound and six times faster than a standard airliner.

It's not the first time hypersonic flight has been attempted. In 1960, tests took place on the X-15 - half plane, half missile - which carried one pilot and flew for 90 seconds before its rocket fuel burnt out.

Its creators thought it would herald a new era of high-speed civil aviation but more than 50 years later, a hypersonic passenger plane has yet to be tested or even built.

Now a team led by the European Space Agency, known as Lapcat, are working on an aircraft called the A2, which could take up where the X-15 left off.

The technology involved in exceeding the speed of sound - Mach 1 - is extremely complex.

"Mach number is the key," says aerodynamics expert at Imperial College London, Paul Bruce.

When you go below Mach 1, so flying slower than the speed of sound, and then go above Mach 1, the physics changes, he says.

"When you go to Mach 5 or 6 the laws start changing once again."

At hypersonic speeds, gases and metals behave very differently. Airliner engines that work at subsonic speeds - about Mach 0.85 or 913km per hour - won't work.

A plane that will fly five times faster than the speed of sound also needs an engine that can take off at subsonic, boost to supersonic and cruise at hypersonic speeds.

Another problem is heat. When air moves over the plane's chassis at high speed, friction causes its temperature to rise very quickly - to over 1,000C, so the outer shell of the plane has to be built to withstand very high temperatures.

Engineers think they can overcome these problems, but it will take them decades to do so. The A2 is not expected to fly until 2040.

The ghost of Concorde also haunts the project. Concorde flew for 27 years but after an air crash investigation grounded it in 2000, its carriers British Airways and Air France realised they could generate more revenue by selling first and business class tickets on subsonic planes.

Tom Otley of Business Traveller magazine believes hypersonic flight could suffer the same fate because the demand for faster flights just isn't there.

of the Lapcat consortium, says the cost of hypersonic flight would match that of current business class travel - but sceptics say this presupposes the discovery of a new, much cheaper, way to produce the A2's liquid hydrogen fuel.

At present, to create enough hydrogen to fly 10 hypersonic planes from the UK to Australia every day would use up to 20% of the UK's national grid, according to one calculation. And in the European Union, airlines will from 2012 be obliged to pay for each unit of carbon they emit.

Even if cheap liquid hydrogen does become available, aviation expert John Strickland questions whether high-speed flying will ever make sense for the airline industry - which traditionally subsidises economy seats with the profits made in business class.

"If you took those people off those subsonic flights then you throw into question the economics of those flights," he says.

"Somewhere along the line you would end up either cancelling the subsonic flights or struggling to get the right price levels even to make a hypersonic service financially viable."

The Europe to Australia route, he says, has a predominantly friends and family profile. And when British Airways tried to run Concorde to the Far East via Bahrain, the service proved unprofitable and was cancelled.

The A2 will not be able to fly to New York, the world's busiest business-class route, as the distance is too short for it to reach the necessary altitude.

So far, the Lapcat II project has received €10m (£8.33m) in funding from the European Commission and private investors. In 2013, that funding will run out and the project's viability will be reviewed before it can continue.

Project co-ordinator Johan Steelant is confident that the A2 concept will bear fruit.

"In 2013 we will be able to demonstrate that the critical technology is no longer a blocking point," he says. "But of course there are different systems and subsystems that still need to be proven."

The European Commission wants to be a pioneer, showing the way forward for aviation in the second half of the century, Mr Steelant says.

But John Strickland remains doubtful.

"It's a big scientific and technological ambition," he says. "But in this current climate when governments don't have enough money to deal with every day to day challenge they are certainly not going to put it into hypothetical projects to build a hypersonic airline."

“If you meet God, you will be blessed.”

by The Voice of the Martyrs


At the height of the famine in North Korea, 10 or 11 people were dying of starvation daily in Sister Yang’s village. At times, she had to eat wood and even sand. In 2002, she escaped to China in search of food and a chance to earn some money. It was in China that she first heard about God.

“A woman in China told me about the existence of God and that if you meet God you will be blessed,” Sister Yang said. “I believed in God and returned to North Korea as a Christian. It was then I was overheard praying. When a co-worker asked what I was doing, I didn’t answer. But soon I was arrested and tortured for 30 days.”

Sister Yang was watched constantly by police, and her family disowned her. With no place to go, she again fled to China. But after reaching China, she was kidnapped and sold as a slave to a Chinese businessman.

“I had been raped by my slave owner and was six months pregnant when a friend and I hired some brokers to help us escape into South Korea. But we got lost on the Mongolian border. There, I miscarried and laid the baby in my handbag, which I carried with me. All around us were bones - bones of others who had gone before us trying to escape.”

Sister Yang’s friend died from the cold and hunger. Finally, she lay down next to the bodies of her friend and her miscarried child and prayed that God would save her. Two days later, she was discovered lying in the snow by Mongolian border guards. All of the toes on her left foot had to be amputated because of frostbite.

“My faith has been tested,” Sister Yang said, “but God has saved me and I am living for God. I want to be a missionary. I want to return to North Korea and tell my people of God’s love.”

As we close out another year and begin 2012, we pray that testimonies like Sister Yang's, although very difficult, will strengthen our own faith, helping us face our own trials and to live for God and his purposes for our lives.