This
post is light-hearted, “just for fun”. You don’t need to read it, but it may
make you smile, and I hope it gives some useful creative ideas about
law, politics, finance.
“He has approved of the enterprise”
“New Secular Order”
As we all know there are a couple of financial problems facing the industrialized global core, the transatlantic trade area, the global north.
On the one hand, the U.S. is heavily in debt, and constantly sells less than it buys. (“the bond crisis”)<
Meanwhile, there are questions as to Europe’s internal financial order (“the Euro crisis”).
The legal questions are: is there a “financial constitution” and/or an “economic constitution”? (Finanzverfassung; Wirtschaftsverfassung). I ask you to reflect on those questions because while those are both well considered issues in German constitutional law they are not really part of U.S. constitutional discourse, and I think they should be.
Like you are learning, the German Grundgesetz does not embody a particular economic order. Neither radical economic individualism nor state enterprises are prohibited or proscribed by the German Grundgesetz. However, the Grundgesetz does guaranty social democratic rights to state resources (Vornahmerechte) as an End of state power (Zweck), the means which the German state may use to guaranty access to education, housing, work, food, is open.
At the EU level however the question whether the EU treaty expresses an economic constitution is open.
The question isn’t even asked in U.S. law.
The reason I think it is a useful question is because of the idea of global constitutionalism. A key current question facing the world is what is known as a “reserve currency”. The U.S. dollar is still the world’s primary reserve currency, though the Euro is becoming a secondary reserve currency. A reserve currency is used by banks globally and in international trade. Roughly (this is a rough estimate) one trillion U.S. dollars are floating around the world, never even being used within the U.S. economy.
Of course, productive countries like China and Russia wonder why they use U.S. dollars (or Euros) in their mutual trade. Well, the reason is because those currencies are stable and the bonds emitted by the Federal Reserve and the Bundesbank simply will not default (unlike Argentina’s…). Domestic political stability also explains why people use dollars and euros, not roubles and yuan.
In one of my courses (and a paper I wrote) I argue that we will see, and require, a global OECD antitrust/competition law convention. We may also require a global banking convention.
If you were to develop an idea of a “global financial constitution” or a “global economic constitution” what elements would it contain? Where would you draw them from?
This isn’t an idea I am yet working on, but it may interest you, so I point it out.