Carswell calls for currency competition

Douglas Carswell MP, a Tory backbencher, today called for a Commons debate on legal tender laws and currency competiton. From the BBC:

Parliament is to debate a call for foreign currencies to be made legal tender in the UK.

Such a move would protect savers by allowing them to hold the currency least likely to be devalued, Tory MP Douglas Carswell told the Commons.

Carswell, and fellow backbencher Steve Baker, have been a rare voice in the Commons promoting banking reform and questioning our current monetary system, described by Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, as

Of all many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.

For some reason the BBC inaccurately describes Hayek as a monetarist, rather than an Austrian economist. It’s especially odd considering Carswell is quoted as describing both Keynesism and monetarism as failed. Do the BBC not wish to educate their readers to the presence of this third school of economics?

Here’s to a rigourous Commons debate!

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