Naturally, prominent globalist leaders and central bankers have been at the forefront of promoting world-currency schemes. And they are confident that the groundwork has been sufficiently laid to achieve the goal. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been among the most vocal supporters. At the G-8 meeting last year, he actually pulled a “united future world currency” coin out of his pocket bearing the words “unity in diversity.” Then, he explained to the audience that it “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.” In June of this year, he was at it again. “We are making plans for the future. We are talking about creating other reserve currencies, and we are counting on other countries to understand this,” Medvedev told an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

At the same forum, French President Nicolas Sarkozy concurred, saying world powers “should think together about a new international currency system” at the upcoming G-20 summit. He also said the world’s financial system was “outdated” and should be replaced. “We all need to think about the foundations for a new international financial system,” he urged. “We’ve been based on the Bretton Woods institutions of 1945, when our American friends were the only superpower. My question is: Are we still in 1945? The answer here is, ‘no.’”

Numerous other prominent national leaders have jumped on the international fiat-currency bandwagon as well — too many to list in a short article. But perhaps more importantly, powerful central bankers around the world are also pushing the issue. Former Fed boss and current chairman of Obama’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Board” Paul Volcker, for example, has long been a strong proponent of a global fiat currency and a global central bank. He is widely reported to have said, “A global economy needs a global currency.” And he has repeatedly called for such a system, hoping to see it emerge during his lifetime.

In China, the “people’s” central-bank boss Zhou Xiaochuan has also frequently called for a new reserve currency. In a 2009 report published on the central bank’s website entitled “Reform the International Monetary System,” Xiaochuan explained that “the desirable goal of reforming the international monetary system, therefore, is to create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”

When asked about the communist-Chinese regime’s idea at a Council on Foreign Relations event, tax-dodging U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a regular proponent of global regulation, after acknowledging that he had not read it yet, said, “We’re actually quite open to that.” The dollar immediately plunged. And while Geithner promptly backtracked on his statement, as the saying goes, the cat was already out of the bag.

At a separate Council on Foreign Relations event earlier this year, European Central Bank boss Jean-Claude Trichet gave a speech entitled “Global Governance Today.” While different in important respects from calls to empower the International Monetary Fund as the world central bank, which seems to be the consensus view on how to quickly achieve a world currency, Trichet offered a vision that would ultimately lead to the same end. “We need a set of rules, institutions, informal groupings and cooperation mechanisms that we call ‘global governance,’” he said, praising the progress that has already been made in “strengthening the mandate of existing international institutions” but noting that “no market can survive without a set of rules. This is particularly true at the international level.”

In terms of the international monetary system, he applauded the fact that central banks around the world were already “able to take quick, decisive and coordinated action at short notice.” But “the crisis also showed that gaps in the system of global governance — in terms of both efficiency and legitimacy — have to be filled,” he explained, pointing out that the process was already ongoing.

“Overall, the system is moving decisively towards genuine global governance that is much more inclusive,” Trichet said. “The significant transformation of global governance that we are engineering today is illustrated by three examples. First, the emergence of the G20 as the prime group for global economic governance at the level of ministers, governors and heads of state or government. Second, the establishment of the Global Economy Meeting of central bank governors under the auspices of the [Bank for International Settlements (BIS)] as the prime group for the governance of central bank cooperation. And third, the extension of Financial Stability Board membership to include all the systemic emerging market economies.” In other words, the BIS, the central bank of central banks (which was almost disbanded for supporting the Nazis), is becoming increasingly powerful, along with global financial regulatory institutions. And for Trichet, this is a positive development.

He added, “Global governance is of the essence to improve decisively the resilience of the global financial system,” and concluded by saying, “The crisis has driven an historic change in the framework of global governance. In my view this transformation was overdue.” And indeed, the economic crisis has given a major boost to advocates of a world financial and monetary regime.