Talk:Special drawing rights

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Discussion Summary Idea Proposal
Unlike many other currencies, SDR's have been deliberately created on the basis of arguments and against other arguments. Therefore it seems a good idea to add the summary of the discussion(s) in the international gremia that led to SDR's.

Use of the term currency
The use of the term currency, given the common currency of the term, maybe incorrect. SDR's are specifically not a form of currency, they are a valid legal claim, or Right, that a creditor nation has upon debtor nations. The creditor nation can draw upon the valid legal claim, i.e. demand some form of liquifying the asset, or the asset maybe held in a reserve account, as a reserve asset, in the form of Special Drawing Rights upon the International Monetary Funds leger of current accounts. --nobs

From the IMF website:

"The SDR is neither a currency, nor a claim on the IMF. Rather, it is a potential claim on the freely usable currencies of IMF members." Frequently asked questions What is an SDR?

Still don't understand why SDRs are in the Category:Currencies when SDRs are specifically not a currency, hence the confusion. Thx. Nobs 16:53, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

What is a currency if not a tradable debt instrument? A denial by the UN of the SDR being a currency doesn't mean it isn't a defacto currency in operation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmp717200 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

How SDR's Come Into Existence
Perhaps a subsection on how SDR's come into existence will help shed light on the Purpose of the IMF, instead of the overemphasis and incorrect notion on the IMF page about the IMF as a lending insitution. --nobs

Currency status
Could someone explain in the article why this entity has a currency code if it is not a currency? -- Beland 01:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Because it is a monetary value unit. 85.180.111.207 00:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Basket
How come there are only four currencies in the basket from 2001 onwards? 203.167.171.196 04:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think I know now. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain started using the euro in 2002, wasting twelve perfectly good currencies. 203.167.171.196 04:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Definition
I may be being a little dense, but I do not understand the definition. If an SDR is a basket, I would expect it to be defined something like: Then you could calculate the value from the current exchange rates.
 * 1 SDR = xxx USD + yyy EUR + zzz JPY + ppp GBP.

But it is quoted as a number of percentages, which doesn't make sense.
 * Percentages of what?
 * How do I calculate the absolute value of 1 SDR?
 * If it is a percentage, then if the value of one currency goes up or down, it doesn't make any difference, as the number of units of the currency which make pp % goes up to compensate.

Can somebody please explain. TiffaF 17:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You are right about 1 SDR = xxx USD + yyy EUR + zzz JPY + ppp GBP. The only condition is that xxx + yyy + zzz + ppp = 1 (or 100%) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.177.166.59 (talk) 17:22, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The percentages are a target value, the actual numbers are adjusted periodically. See the table, for example it is currently 0.6320 USD + 0.4100 EUR + 18.4 JPY + 0.0903 GBP (xxx+yyy+zzz+ppp = 19.5323). --Random832 (contribs) 16:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it's - 18.4; from the IMF website: "The exchange rate for the Japanese yen is expressed in terms of currency units per U.S. dollar; other rates are expressed as U.S. dollars per currency unit." 87.194.32.60 (talk) 16:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The value of an SDR is constantly changing with the value of its component currencies. You cannot say an SDR = 18.4 without saying 18.4 what.  1 SDR = 1 SDR in the same way that 1 USD = 1 USD.  If you want to determine the value of an SDR in dollars you can do so as "USD/SDR = x USD/USD + y USD/EUR + z USD/JPY + p USD/GBP" where x,y,z, and p are the percentage weights for each component currency.  You can similarly express SDR's in Euros, Yen, or Pounds.  Each of these valuations, however, is constantly changing with its component exchange rates.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.137.246.163 (talk) 20:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The SDR is defined as 1 XDR := x USD + y EUR + z GBP + w JPY. The definition may be changed every 5th year, though. The percentages are approximations calculated on the actual value of each of the components. —  3 2 4 7    (talk) 13:36, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Stiglitz
He does NOT argue "usage by central banks of SDRs as foreign exchange reserve could be viewed as the prelude to the creation of a single world currency" in Making Globalization Work. He argues that imbalances caused by the current reserve system can be remedied by something similar to SDR.

"In a time of crisis, the country can take these global greenbacks and exchange them for euros or dollars or yen."

"Under this new regime, it would exchange the global greenbacks for conventional hard currencies like dollars or euros and sell those to support its currency."

There is no "single world currency" being preluded to. 69.81.118.164 (talk) 05:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Future avenue
Weighting of SDRs can be based on physical necessities. The metric would be as the following: pesos per shirt, dollars per home, yen per medicine, or renminbi per decent meal. This could become a much better way of weighting the values than the current method, which relies on mere numbers. GreySun (talk) 08:12, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Why mention gold?
Since SDRs are NOT defined in terms of metals I'll remove all unsourced metal claims in this article. Hcobb (talk)

Taking-up CO2e-certificates in the SDR basket
CarbonIsMoney.com's Sven AERTS has discussed this with IUCN's Ignace Schops – Winner Goldman Prize 2008 - www.goldmanprize.org and manager in Natuurpunt.be during Greenweek 2010, the open doors of the DG Environment of the European Commission. The first day of the Greenweek 2010 had a full day on the creation of a Biodiversity Certificate Trading System, inspired by the successes of the CO2e-Emission Trading System. --SvenAERTS (talk) 07:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Petro-Middle East to Favor SDR's over USA $?
I'd have thought also those who get all their fossile petrol paid in USA $ favored the SDR's to be paid into?--SvenAERTS (talk) 10:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

removal of citations
I removed most of the citations from the page recently because they didn't seem to support the material. The weird thing is that I wrote most of the article and placed those citations there. So I will go through all the cites from an old version and debut a page sans nonsense refs soonish. Fleetham (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Replaced innocuous refs. I removed a ft.com cite because it couldn't support material. I replaced the ft.com ref with a cite needed tag. I will go over one source that provides primary framework (Understanding Special Drawing Rights John Williamson, The Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 2009.) for page as I want citations to more closely support the material they are cited to support, even if in this case that means quoting or something approaching quoting. Fleetham (talk) 05:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits (moved from personal page)
Hey, you've been editing the SDR page, I think that's great! I do want to add more citations really soon. I talked about this on the talk page. Let's work together and not "bump" into one another in a manner of speaking. I don't know the best way to accomplish this; is it better for me to wait until you complete and then I'll go and delete everything or should I go first or should we work together carefully at the same time?

4 example, you removed the "debt v. equity" discussion, but I feel this is integral to place such economic innovations in a pre-existing context and the basic framework used by manys. What's so interesting about the SDR is that it's a debt instrument that's not fee based.

So, it worries me that you felt it needed it be removed.

You also added "Ron Paul" citations, and that worries me ALOT. He has nothing valuable to contribute? IDK but he is a political figure. An American one, to boot. So let's keep the discussion focused on how useful a tool the SDR can be to nations such as China and pinning down what the SDR is best thought of as.

Also, you removed the history section. I feel the SDR has an interesting history. You don't mind if I replace it with perspicuous citations, do you? Fleetham (talk) 05:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * No, I didn't remove the debt/equity section, I rewrote it, expanded, and connected it with what was already there, but in a more logical integrated fashion, not as single unrelated factoid. SDR's can no longer be viewed as debt, at least not unambiguously, and I added a discussion of that according to the ref. Overall the page was in much better shape months ago and the more recent changes, more or less randomized content with no clear structure, but with many problems. All I did really, is reestablish what worked well before. Kbrose (talk) 06:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * History section: this history section that was added was not a history section for the SDR, it was a random collection of items and completely incoherent as an article. A history section is not really needed, as the entire article by the nature of its content is a history review, and this is better achieved as a discussion of the various aspects of the topic. You also seem to have the habit of attaching catch phrases as section titles which only divide the content into standalone discourse, rather than meaningful development of content, e.g., what is the useful purpose of a section entitled 'US deficit', with only two sentences. Kbrose (talk) 06:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * You did remove it, folding it into the article as if it were proteins to be made into a certain conformation. And I'll call you uncooperative if we don't agree to make incremental changes to the article instead of reverts.

That said, what I would like to focus on now is the removal of "three equals" section subdivisions... I think that they're really good and helpful. Is it okay if I don't change your edit but just name the paragraphs pretty much? Fleetham (talk) 06:35, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * useful because that's what people are looking for. I don't go to a dictionary for anything other than reference. If I am at the page I want to know one thing not everything about the topic. Subsection headers help. If I have to use my browser's "search" function than that's inconvenient. There is no reason, other than habituation to reading content sans, for someone who reads the entire page to be jarred by subsection headers. Fleetham (talk) 06:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Look, you don't want to talk about, I don't want to talk about. Tell me how I can help the article in an inoffensive way and then I'll start demanding changes. Fleetham (talk) 06:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, how about I make any random edit and see if it's becoming reverted? Fleetham (talk) 07:06, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * yes, you did revert it. You are hostile. Fleetham (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I made a small edit. if you don't like it, discuss it don't revert it; or I will add it again with citations. Fleetham (talk) 19:36, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * if you don't want to discuss it, then select from the following options: 1. I reverted the edit because it was untrue 2. I reverted the edit because it provided incomplete information


 * the point is, you don't revert without providing feedback, or you will be treated as hostile. Fleetham (talk) 19:46, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I provided edit summary, your edits were not improvements, and it's not clear why they were undertaken. You added wrong facts. Kbrose (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Your repeated edit introduce simply wrong information as stated in the edit summary and your edits randomize content just as incoherent as the above comments. SDR are not IMF assets primarily, but of the countries that hold them for use in commerce etc. The IMF keeps its books with them, and defines the unit and maintains it. Primarily an SDR is simply a unit of measure, becoming an asset only once allocated and recognized by members. Kbrose (talk) 20:38, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will attempt to add to the page only using perspicuous citations to support material, keep material deletion to a minimum, and hold a "devil may care" attitude in regards to things like, "Special Drawing Rights are allocated to member states as a low cost alternative to debt financing for building reserves" That sounds great, but why isn't it stated explicitly by the IMF? Fleetham (talk) 21:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That phrase sounds like it came from an IMF document of the past, according to my memory, but more importantly it makes perfect sense in the context of the rebuilding efforts after WWII. Kbrose (talk) 05:21, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It does make perfect sense, which is why I am wondering why the SDR is not advertised as such. Fleetham (talk) 05:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

a far more important part to play, or, perhaps, an important future role
These two expressions mean the same thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 15:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to Special drawing rights. Favonian (talk) 18:57, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Special Drawing Rights → Special drawing rights –

Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. In addition, WP:MOSCAPS says that a compound item should not be upper-cased just because it is abbreviated with caps. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony  (talk)  09:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per Google Scholar usage In ictu oculi (talk) 12:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Adams' Complete investment and finance dictionary uses lower case. Kauffner (talk) 14:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose -- SDR is a single compound noun. The use of lower case would detract from the clarity of this.  Contrary to nom, it is a specialism "commerical" term in inter-governmetnal finance.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter, the article text doesn't even support this: "The name may actually derive from an early proposal for IMF "reserve drawing rights".[pamphlet 1] The word "reserve" was later replaced with "special" because the idea that the IMF was creating a foreign exchange reserve asset was contentious.[4]" (Although I don't like the "may" that morphs into a "fact" in the second sentence.) If special drawing rights weren't so distinctive and exclusive a noun phrase, we might be a little cautious. But it's an everyday word in the industry and for any reader of the financial section of a daily broadsheet. The fact that it's a "compound" item doesn't affect capitalisation. Tony   (talk)  15:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a notational currency the central banks use with each other. You don't capitalize dollar, euro, pound, or peso. Here it is lower cased in Merriam-Webster. Kauffner (talk) 15:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose It's not really a currency, and it should be capitalized because it's a proper noun. There was a proposal for "reserve drawing rights", but, as they never came into being, "reserve drawing rights" are not a proper noun! Fleetham (talk) 02:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The SDR appears both capitalized and uncapitalized: The IMF uses capitalization (here, here, and here), but The Economist and Reuters both don't. Other sources show similar variation: A Professor's policy brief uses caps, as does the Uni. of British Columbia's factsheet, as well as the book Special Drawing Rights: The first international money, but the book The Role of the SDR in the international monetary system doesn't.
 * There's really no clear way forward here. I would caution against saying, "it's a currency therefore no caps" because it's really very far from being a currency. But I'm amenable to changing it to "no caps", as many other sources do likewise. Fleetham (talk) 18:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support – per MOS:CAPS. Yes, it's a compound noun; but not a proper one.  Every one of the first 10 google books hits for this search uses lower case (some of these also use all-cap and/or title case, which is what shows up in some of the snippets).  Dicklyon (talk) 19:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like we have a consensus to de-capitalize. Fleetham (talk) 01:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Why I removed a reference to New Zealand
Section "Other Uses" contained a reference to and brief phrase about New Zealand Reserve Bank using SDRs as foreign reserves... the cited reference, however, only mentioned New Zealand in the context of a demonstration of a potential benefit of using SDRs as an index for oil prices. I removed the reference and cite due to this inconsistency. Baon (talk) 06:43, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Request clarification of allocations...
I found the section on the 'allocation' of SDRs to be a bit confusing. It suggests that they are purchased by member countries, rather like shares in a corporation... but this is not made explicit. They are apparently traded (in certain special circumstances?) among member countries in order to secure foreign currency when needed, but the manner that accounts are depleted and then brought back to quota is left to the imagination as are the circumstances under which they might be traded (or cashed in... or whatever). I think I get the idea, but I have low confidence in my understanding (I feel I have to guess based on the text). The discussion of their nature as being somewhere between a currency and a credit could perhaps be clearer if an example or two of how they are used was provided. It is a unit of account. OK. A unit of accounting for what? I think there is a suggestion that what is being accounted is the value of imports and exports, but again, this is not made sufficiently explicit in my opinion. They are a promise of access to a specified amount of one of the currencies in the currency basket (at market rates? at privileged rates? as a free gift for joining the IMF?) Baon (talk) 07:15, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

New basket
When will the new basket be defined? 2A02:908:DB25:EB00:2885:3819:5D40:54B9 (talk) 02:47, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Broken links
I'm sorry I could not figure out how to edit the footnotes, but here's an updated link for #8 http://www.imf.org/external/np/tre/sdr/proposal/2009/0709.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.56.145.199 (talk) 07:38, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Dr. Wyplosz's comment on this article
Dr. Wyplosz has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Nobody really uses the ISO name XDR. SDR is how this is known."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Wyplosz has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Park, Yung Chul & Wyplosz, Charles, 2012. "International Monetary Reform: A Critical Appraisal of Some Proposals," ADBI Working Papers 364, Asian Development Bank Institute.

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External links modified
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two sets of numbers can't both be true
I'm puzzled by the numbers in the table "Value of 1 XDR". If the last row means that one XDR is currently defined as $0.58252 + €0.38671 + CNY1.0174 + ¥11.900 + £0.085946, okay, but what do the percentages mean? Does "41.73%" (under USD) mean that, when the current basket mix was adopted in 2016, $0.58252 was equivalent to XDR0.4173? In my ignorance, I can't see any way in which both the numbers, the scalar and the percentage, are meaningful for more than one moment of time. —Tamfang (talk) 06:13, 9 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes - the weights are decided two months in advance and held fixed for two months (the amounts aren't decided yet). Then, one business day before taking effect, the weights are converted to amounts and the amounts are held fixed for five years (the weights may fluctuate a bit afterward). So both the weights and the amounts are officially published and informative. (I added this to the article in June 2022.) Zowayix001 (talk) 05:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

SDR or XDR?
This article uses both interchangably, should we edit it to use just either SDR (the acronym) or XDR (the official currency code) or continue to use both interchangeably?

Basedeunie042 (talk) 17:32, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I have a preference for XDR just because it's less ambiguous (the SDR article lists 25 things, while the XDR article only lists 8 things). Zowayix001 (talk) 05:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Correctness of data in Historical valuation
When looking at the data in the table in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights#Historical_valuation I do not see a source for the USD value of 0.68 for the period 2011–2016.

I see the percentage in the cited source (#62) but not the value 0.68.

Furthermore, when looking at this source: [Https://web.archive.org/web/20160414002025/http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/SDR.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160414002025/http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/SDR.html] (also a citation on the page (#64)) there the value is cited as 0.66.

So I see a cited source of 0.66 but cant find a source for the 0.68 value currently displayed in the table.

Can somebody look into this? 193.4.113.34 (talk) 17:03, 9 December 2022 (UTC)


 * After digging through the official site, it looks like you're right and the table in this article had an error.
 * Fixed; thank you! Zowayix001 (talk) 05:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)