May 15, 2006
Money changer | Morrison Bonpasse says a global currency could cure many of the world's economic woes — if economists only would accept the idea
By Andy Vietze
Morrison Bonpasse is no economist, and he's the first to admit it. The extent of the Newcastle resident's professional economic credentials? "I took Econ 101 at Yale forty 40 ago," he says, sitting in the library of the old Maine farmhouse near the Sheepscot River that he shares with his wife, a former judge.
But the 58-year-old lawyer, who made his name in this state by running Maine Staffing Services, an Augusta-based temp agency, during the late nineties, certainly has opinions about the global economy. And in late April he published a book on the topic ˆ a book for which he has very large ambitions. "I believe this is the most important book from Maine since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring," he says, referring to the 1962 masterpiece that has sold more than 2 million copies and is widely credited in founding the modern American environmental movement. "But that's if it sells. If it doesn't sell it'll be the sound of the tree falling in the woods that no one hears."
The book in question, which took him six months to write and $3,000 to self publish, is The Single Global Currency: Common Cents for the World, a 408-page manifesto in which Bonpasse, the president of the nonprofit Single Global Currency Association, presents the case for a common, worldwide monetary system. He envisions something along the lines of the Euro ˆ but for the entire world. Trade between nations would be done using one currency, rather than the roughly 150 the world now uses, saving trillions of dollars in transaction costs, such as the fees banks charge for changing monies to different currencies, Bonpasse argues. Other benefits he cites include preventing currency crises like the one that struck Argentina in the late 1990s.
To Bonpasse, the idea is so obvious and beneficial that it's become almost a moral crusade. "The life of almost every human being on earth will be improved by the implementation of the single global currency," he writes in his book.
For all his conviction, though, Bonpasse realizes that the idea is, well, outside the mainstream of economic thought. He notes that almost no economists, trade experts or treasury officers are studying the idea. ("If there is one out there working on this full-time, please call me," he jokes.) That may be because the idea is simply such a big change it's considered politically unfeasible by many, almost laughably so. Others see problems in having economies of vastly different sizes lacking the ability to revaluate their currencies to regulate the differences between them. In fact, many of the academics and business people contacted for this article either didn't want to be quoted or didn't bother to return calls. Many had never given the topic any consideration, others thought it so far fetched it wasn't worth comment.
Yet Bonpasse is undaunted. Although the organization he created to promote a single global currency has so far only attracted a handful of members and advisors, and the group's annual conferences remain small affairs, he's hoping the publication of his book will spark more discussion of the idea. And he thinks Maine is as good a place as any to lead the global currency revolution.
Removing money from the market
Despite his lack of economic training, Bonpasse has an impressive academic background. He grew up in Duxbury, Mass., and attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover. From there it was on to Yale, a stint in the U.S. Army Special Forces (1968-1971), and then law school at Boston University. After that, he studied public administration at Northeastern, earning an MPA, and later earned an MBA from Babson College in Massachusetts.
Upon graduation, Bonpasse worked in the human resources department at Digital Equipment Company in Maynard, Mass., for years before founding in 1996 his own company, Network Staffing Services in Massachusetts. After vacationing in Maine for several years, he acquired an Augusta-based staffing company in 1998, moved north, and expanded the agency, which he named Maine Staffing Services, to include offices in Saco and Auburn.
A few years later, though, Bonpasse's sister was diagnosed with a serious illness, and he sold the company for an undisclosed profit to care for his ailing sibling. When she died, she left him a large chunk of her retirement savings. These two events freed Bonpasse from having to work full-time, and he devoted himself to fighting for causes. (See "Cause and effect," page 28).
He also had time to run for the Legislature in 2002. That year, he says, everyone else was running on the same issues: taxes and education. He wanted to find an issue that would separate him from the pack. "And I thought, 'What about a single global currency?'" He lost the election, but gained a cause.
In Bonpasse's mind, the current system is both too financially wasteful ˆ the unnecessary costs of transactions between individuals and corporations in different countries ˆ and too unstable due to market fluctuations and speculation. Essentially, Bonpasse says, money is a unit of measurement, such as time or the metric system. Yet money is the only measurement system "that people allow to fluctuate dramatically," he says. "Currencies are too important for markets."
Knowing that most economists dismiss the notion of a single currency, Bonpasse presents both sides of the argument in the book. His website, www.singleglobalcurrency.org, takes the debate even further, hosting a long list of criticisms of a single currency made by economists. The biggest argument against a single currency is that it would limit the kind of economic adjustments ˆ devaluing a currency, for example ˆ countries currently make to assist their local economies or facilitate trade.
Still, some economists who reject the idea don't do so out of hand. Charles Colgan, an economist at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service, says he hasn't read Bonpasse's book, but the idea of a single global currency "is not all that far fetched."
"For the better part of a century the global economy worked on the gold standard," he says. "That's not quite the same thing, because the gold standard had a way to adjust itself, [but] there are still a lot of people who say we should go back to the gold standard."
Colgan draws another parallel ˆ one frequently cited by Bonpasse ˆ with the Euro. "The Europeans did it with the Euro, and this would be an extension of the underlying notion of that," he says.
Colgan sees major difficulties, though, in creating a global monetary union ˆ even if countries were seriously considering it. For starters, the Euro was established among countries with similar levels of economic activity, but a global currency would have no way to mitigate the vast gap between countries like the United States and Sudan. "Currencies are one way for different economic systems to adjust to different levels of production and resources and such," Colgan says. "Otherwise, you'd have to adjust for imbalances by dramatically changing prices, for example."
But Morrison points out that the European Monetary Union is looking to expand, and that the oil-producing nations of the Middle East have been in talks to form a similar pact and common currency. He thinks it might not be too long before the United States, faced with a declining dollar against the Euro or other currencies from monetary unions, is forced to do something similar with Canada. "Pretty soon the Federal Reserve will realize we're not an island," Bonpasse says, "and that we have to deal with currencies from other parts of the world."
One supporter at a time
The Single Global Currency Association, the nonprofit organization Bonpasse founded in 2003, is the mechanism by which Bonpasse hopes to convince the world to adopt a single global currency by 2024.
In his search for like minds, Bonpasse found economics professors such as John Edmunds and John Marthinsen, both at Babson, to join the organization's board of six directors and fourteen advisors. The SGCA currently has no dues-paying members, but Bonpasse figures he has about 100 supporters who have written to express their belief in the cause. "That's a small percentage of the world's 6.5 billion people," he says with characteristic humor. "So we have some organizing work to do."
To that end, the SGCA in 2004 held its first conference, at Bretton Woods, N.H., the site of the famed 1944 Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, which laid the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund, among other developments. Only 12 people attended the SGCA's first event, and Bonpasse says 15 people came to the organization's second conference the following year.
A third SGCA conference is scheduled for this July, and Babson economics professor Marthinsen is one person who plans to attend. The co-author of Wealth by Association: Global Prosperity through Market Unification, a book that explores the economic impact of the European Monetary Union, Marthinsen finds a number of reasons why a single global currency makes sense, including the ability to do away with the transaction fees and currency risk associated with international trade. "Doing business between countries would be as easy as doing business between Maine and California," he says.
That would benefit a border state like Maine, Bonpasse says. He cites increased stability for businesses with an international reach, such as Ogunquit hospitality businesses that rely on Canadian tourists. When the Canadian dollar is strong, Ogunquit gets more visitors, he says. When the Canadian dollar is weak, those visitors from the North dwindle.
That argument has intrigued at least one potential supporter, state Rep. Ross Paradis (D-Frenchville), who is considering a bill for the next session of the Legislature that would express support for a single global currency ˆ but with interim steps that start with a North American currency. "It's certainly worked well in Europe with the Euro," says Paradis. "It would put Maine and Canada on an even playing field."
At the very least, a single global currency would simplify travel for Mainers. Ben van der Schaaf is a commercial finance manager with a global management consulting agency based in London. He grew up in the Netherlands, but lives in Union with his family. Now, his work takes him frequently back to Europe. "It would definitely make things easier if there was one currency," van der Schaaf says. "Getting money out of the United States to another country ˆ especially if you are dealing with a local bank ˆ is pretty archaic."
For Morrison Bonpasse, the battle to create a single currency is anything but easy. He has a hard time getting people to return his calls, and so spends days writing letters at a stand-up computer station in his basement office. But he keeps at it, working to spread the news about the Single Global Currency Association through vehicles like his conferences and his new book. He's already selling copies through Amazon.com and plans to appeal to local banks to host book signings. He's also planning to contact Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen to ask them to consider endorsing the idea ˆ part of his belief that getting enough supporters locally could make Maine a global leader in currency issues.
Bonpasse also hopes the book will entice investment in the SGCA. He's put about $6,000 into the organization and says others have invested $1,500 more. But he needs a larger cash injection to fund his efforts, and maintains that if any foundation were to give him a grant, the return on that investment ˆ in the form of projected savings from establishing a single global currency ˆ would be immense. "If we got, say, $2 million, and it helped us advance the implementation date of our efforts by one week, we would have saved the world about $8 billion. The numbers are staggering," he says. "That's what makes part of what I'm doing seem unreal. People don't get it yet."
But the 58-year-old lawyer, who made his name in this state by running Maine Staffing Services, an Augusta-based temp agency, during the late nineties, certainly has opinions about the global economy. And in late April he published a book on the topic ˆ a book for which he has very large ambitions. "I believe this is the most important book from Maine since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring," he says, referring to the 1962 masterpiece that has sold more than 2 million copies and is widely credited in founding the modern American environmental movement. "But that's if it sells. If it doesn't sell it'll be the sound of the tree falling in the woods that no one hears."
The book in question, which took him six months to write and $3,000 to self publish, is The Single Global Currency: Common Cents for the World, a 408-page manifesto in which Bonpasse, the president of the nonprofit Single Global Currency Association, presents the case for a common, worldwide monetary system. He envisions something along the lines of the Euro ˆ but for the entire world. Trade between nations would be done using one currency, rather than the roughly 150 the world now uses, saving trillions of dollars in transaction costs, such as the fees banks charge for changing monies to different currencies, Bonpasse argues. Other benefits he cites include preventing currency crises like the one that struck Argentina in the late 1990s.
To Bonpasse, the idea is so obvious and beneficial that it's become almost a moral crusade. "The life of almost every human being on earth will be improved by the implementation of the single global currency," he writes in his book.
For all his conviction, though, Bonpasse realizes that the idea is, well, outside the mainstream of economic thought. He notes that almost no economists, trade experts or treasury officers are studying the idea. ("If there is one out there working on this full-time, please call me," he jokes.) That may be because the idea is simply such a big change it's considered politically unfeasible by many, almost laughably so. Others see problems in having economies of vastly different sizes lacking the ability to revaluate their currencies to regulate the differences between them. In fact, many of the academics and business people contacted for this article either didn't want to be quoted or didn't bother to return calls. Many had never given the topic any consideration, others thought it so far fetched it wasn't worth comment.
Yet Bonpasse is undaunted. Although the organization he created to promote a single global currency has so far only attracted a handful of members and advisors, and the group's annual conferences remain small affairs, he's hoping the publication of his book will spark more discussion of the idea. And he thinks Maine is as good a place as any to lead the global currency revolution.
Removing money from the market
Despite his lack of economic training, Bonpasse has an impressive academic background. He grew up in Duxbury, Mass., and attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover. From there it was on to Yale, a stint in the U.S. Army Special Forces (1968-1971), and then law school at Boston University. After that, he studied public administration at Northeastern, earning an MPA, and later earned an MBA from Babson College in Massachusetts.
Upon graduation, Bonpasse worked in the human resources department at Digital Equipment Company in Maynard, Mass., for years before founding in 1996 his own company, Network Staffing Services in Massachusetts. After vacationing in Maine for several years, he acquired an Augusta-based staffing company in 1998, moved north, and expanded the agency, which he named Maine Staffing Services, to include offices in Saco and Auburn.
A few years later, though, Bonpasse's sister was diagnosed with a serious illness, and he sold the company for an undisclosed profit to care for his ailing sibling. When she died, she left him a large chunk of her retirement savings. These two events freed Bonpasse from having to work full-time, and he devoted himself to fighting for causes. (See "Cause and effect," page 28).
He also had time to run for the Legislature in 2002. That year, he says, everyone else was running on the same issues: taxes and education. He wanted to find an issue that would separate him from the pack. "And I thought, 'What about a single global currency?'" He lost the election, but gained a cause.
In Bonpasse's mind, the current system is both too financially wasteful ˆ the unnecessary costs of transactions between individuals and corporations in different countries ˆ and too unstable due to market fluctuations and speculation. Essentially, Bonpasse says, money is a unit of measurement, such as time or the metric system. Yet money is the only measurement system "that people allow to fluctuate dramatically," he says. "Currencies are too important for markets."
Knowing that most economists dismiss the notion of a single currency, Bonpasse presents both sides of the argument in the book. His website, www.singleglobalcurrency.org, takes the debate even further, hosting a long list of criticisms of a single currency made by economists. The biggest argument against a single currency is that it would limit the kind of economic adjustments ˆ devaluing a currency, for example ˆ countries currently make to assist their local economies or facilitate trade.
Still, some economists who reject the idea don't do so out of hand. Charles Colgan, an economist at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service, says he hasn't read Bonpasse's book, but the idea of a single global currency "is not all that far fetched."
"For the better part of a century the global economy worked on the gold standard," he says. "That's not quite the same thing, because the gold standard had a way to adjust itself, [but] there are still a lot of people who say we should go back to the gold standard."
Colgan draws another parallel ˆ one frequently cited by Bonpasse ˆ with the Euro. "The Europeans did it with the Euro, and this would be an extension of the underlying notion of that," he says.
Colgan sees major difficulties, though, in creating a global monetary union ˆ even if countries were seriously considering it. For starters, the Euro was established among countries with similar levels of economic activity, but a global currency would have no way to mitigate the vast gap between countries like the United States and Sudan. "Currencies are one way for different economic systems to adjust to different levels of production and resources and such," Colgan says. "Otherwise, you'd have to adjust for imbalances by dramatically changing prices, for example."
But Morrison points out that the European Monetary Union is looking to expand, and that the oil-producing nations of the Middle East have been in talks to form a similar pact and common currency. He thinks it might not be too long before the United States, faced with a declining dollar against the Euro or other currencies from monetary unions, is forced to do something similar with Canada. "Pretty soon the Federal Reserve will realize we're not an island," Bonpasse says, "and that we have to deal with currencies from other parts of the world."
One supporter at a time
The Single Global Currency Association, the nonprofit organization Bonpasse founded in 2003, is the mechanism by which Bonpasse hopes to convince the world to adopt a single global currency by 2024.
In his search for like minds, Bonpasse found economics professors such as John Edmunds and John Marthinsen, both at Babson, to join the organization's board of six directors and fourteen advisors. The SGCA currently has no dues-paying members, but Bonpasse figures he has about 100 supporters who have written to express their belief in the cause. "That's a small percentage of the world's 6.5 billion people," he says with characteristic humor. "So we have some organizing work to do."
To that end, the SGCA in 2004 held its first conference, at Bretton Woods, N.H., the site of the famed 1944 Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, which laid the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund, among other developments. Only 12 people attended the SGCA's first event, and Bonpasse says 15 people came to the organization's second conference the following year.
A third SGCA conference is scheduled for this July, and Babson economics professor Marthinsen is one person who plans to attend. The co-author of Wealth by Association: Global Prosperity through Market Unification, a book that explores the economic impact of the European Monetary Union, Marthinsen finds a number of reasons why a single global currency makes sense, including the ability to do away with the transaction fees and currency risk associated with international trade. "Doing business between countries would be as easy as doing business between Maine and California," he says.
That would benefit a border state like Maine, Bonpasse says. He cites increased stability for businesses with an international reach, such as Ogunquit hospitality businesses that rely on Canadian tourists. When the Canadian dollar is strong, Ogunquit gets more visitors, he says. When the Canadian dollar is weak, those visitors from the North dwindle.
That argument has intrigued at least one potential supporter, state Rep. Ross Paradis (D-Frenchville), who is considering a bill for the next session of the Legislature that would express support for a single global currency ˆ but with interim steps that start with a North American currency. "It's certainly worked well in Europe with the Euro," says Paradis. "It would put Maine and Canada on an even playing field."
At the very least, a single global currency would simplify travel for Mainers. Ben van der Schaaf is a commercial finance manager with a global management consulting agency based in London. He grew up in the Netherlands, but lives in Union with his family. Now, his work takes him frequently back to Europe. "It would definitely make things easier if there was one currency," van der Schaaf says. "Getting money out of the United States to another country ˆ especially if you are dealing with a local bank ˆ is pretty archaic."
For Morrison Bonpasse, the battle to create a single currency is anything but easy. He has a hard time getting people to return his calls, and so spends days writing letters at a stand-up computer station in his basement office. But he keeps at it, working to spread the news about the Single Global Currency Association through vehicles like his conferences and his new book. He's already selling copies through Amazon.com and plans to appeal to local banks to host book signings. He's also planning to contact Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen to ask them to consider endorsing the idea ˆ part of his belief that getting enough supporters locally could make Maine a global leader in currency issues.
Bonpasse also hopes the book will entice investment in the SGCA. He's put about $6,000 into the organization and says others have invested $1,500 more. But he needs a larger cash injection to fund his efforts, and maintains that if any foundation were to give him a grant, the return on that investment ˆ in the form of projected savings from establishing a single global currency ˆ would be immense. "If we got, say, $2 million, and it helped us advance the implementation date of our efforts by one week, we would have saved the world about $8 billion. The numbers are staggering," he says. "That's what makes part of what I'm doing seem unreal. People don't get it yet."
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