---
title: "The International Monetary System — Sami Miettinen on Puheenaihe"
titleOriginal: "Talous: Kansainvälinen rahajärjestelmä (Sam Laakso & Sami Miettinen) | Puheenaihe 44"
description: "Sami Miettinen and Sam Laakso on Puheenaihe, recorded at the end of the longest and weakest US expansion on record: what money is, why low rates are a deliberate central-bank choice rather than a market outcome, why pegging a local currency one-to-one to an international settlement currency is the flaw shared by the gold standard and the euro, and how small crypto still was next to the euro system."
format: "podcast"
show: "Puheenaihe"
episode: "44"
hosts: ["Puheenaihe"]
date: 2019-10-31
duration: "57:53"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYq-ad95Gw4
relatedEpisode: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep9-korona-black-swan-tuomas-malinen/
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/puheenaihe-44-international-monetary-system/
---

# The International Monetary System — Sami Miettinen on Puheenaihe

Sami Miettinen and Sam Laakso joined **Puheenaihe** for an hour on the plumbing of the
global monetary system — recorded in October 2019, at the tail of what was then the
longest expansion in American history and simultaneously one of the weakest by average
annual growth. The timing gives the conversation a particular flavour: much of what they
describe as a coming problem arrived within five months.

The argument that carries the episode is about pegs. A gold standard rebalances itself:
gold flows to wherever goods and services are produced most efficiently, and inflationary
pressure follows it. What breaks the mechanism is not gold but the peg — tying a local
currency one-to-one to an international settlement currency while labour markets stay
rigid and cannot adjust. Sami's point is that this is precisely the euro's defect too,
which is why a Greek bank deposit and a German one are not the same asset despite sharing
a denomination, and why the banking union's €60bn of common money against a bank sector
balance sheet in the tens of thousands of billions is not really insurance.

On central banks the two are blunt: the level of the policy rate is a fully deliberate
choice, made to let states borrow cheaply, and the long-run drag underneath it — slowing
productivity and population growth — is not something a rate can fix. The debt has to be
adjusted down eventually, because otherwise its real burden is too heavy. Sam's own
expectation is that the euro eventually splits back into national currencies, triggered
by a crisis rather than a threshold.

The last third covers what was then new: Russia's central bank floating a digital
gold-backed currency, Facebook's Libra as an SDR-like basket of four currencies minus the
renminbi, and the scale problem — all crypto together at around €200bn against a euro
system of roughly €21,000bn and gold at some €8,000bn. It closes on housing: asset-class
inflation, a Nordic mortgage comparison, Bloomberg's fifty million empty Chinese
apartments, and why Sami will leverage quality Helsinki property but not equities.

## Chapters

- **00:00** — What is money, and can you print more of it
- **03:00** — Expansions do not die of old age; the longest and the weakest
- **06:00** — Rates back toward zero, and Europe permanently negative
- **09:00** — Cheap debt for states as the point of the exercise
- **12:00** — Productivity and population growth as the real drag
- **15:00** — Will the euro split back into national currencies
- **18:00** — What a national currency gives you that a supranational one does not
- **21:00** — Central banks buying gold; Russia's digital gold-backed currency
- **24:00** — Why gold, and what alternatives to fiat are being tried
- **27:00** — The gold standard's real flaw is the peg, and the euro shares it
- **30:00** — Automatic rebalancing against rigid labour markets
- **33:00** — The SDR, and Libra as a four-currency basket
- **36:00** — Scale: €200bn of crypto against €21,000bn of euro
- **39:00** — Debt has to be adjusted down; taking the power to borrow away
- **42:00** — A Greek euro deposit and a German one are not the same asset
- **45:00** — The banking union's €60bn against a €30,000bn balance sheet
- **48:00** — Asset-class inflation and a Nordic mortgage comparison
- **51:00** — China's fifty million empty apartments
- **54:00** — Leveraging quality property but not equities
- **57:00** — Closing

**The recording lives on Puheenaihe's own channel and they own it.** This page is a record
of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The episode carries no
published chapter marks; the titles above are derived from the recording.

Sami returned to the same themes with Juhana Vartiainen in
[Puheenaihe 131 on the ECU-2 basket](/media/puheenaihe-131-ecu-2-basket/), and set out the
proposal on his own channel in
[Euro, ECU2 and Hamilton](https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep347-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen/).

Original recording (Puheenaihe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYq-ad95Gw4

From the same session: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep9-korona-black-swan-tuomas-malinen/

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Puheenaihe 44 — The International Monetary System — Sami Miettinen on Puheenaihe, 2019-10-31, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYq-ad95Gw4. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/puheenaihe-44-international-monetary-system/.