With IMF special drawing rights increasingly being pitched as a possible solution to the financial crisis, we thought it might be worth putting up a historical chart of the so-called ‘paper-gold’ currency.

We wonder what the technical analysts would make of it?  Note, for one, the interesting spike at the end of last year.

Remember, one SDR is equal to a currency basket comprised of  the euro, Japanese yen, pound sterling and US dollar. Before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1973 — when Washington abandoned the gold standard — one SDR used to be  equal to 0.88671 grams of gold, the exact amount backing one US dollar bill.

Related links:
Special drawing right factsheet – IMF
Bailing out the planet – The Guardian
Ken Rogoff: Super-sizing the IMF is wrong – The Guardian
A paper-gold reserve system? – FT Alphaville
IMF slow to embrace no brainer – Financial Week

This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 16:07 and is filed under Capital markets, Commodities. Tagged with IMF, special drawing rights. Edit this entry.