Can the United Nations print its own currency?

I am no economist, but I will give it a shot :)

I dont think they would be able to do that.

The UN is not a nation backed organisation in the sense that there is a pool of ressources that they can draw on to support a monetary system, unless it was a consensus between the member nations.

The reason that the EU can do it is that they are formost a economic union, and thus have a lot of support in such a venture from its members (albeit declining a bit after the Euro zone economic trouble).

The economic ramifications would also be big, since each nation would have to recognize the validity of such a currency, set its value relative to its own and much more.

Take the dollar, it has earlier been based on the gold standard, where a dollar was wirth an fixed amout of gold. That was a stable, fixed value, and something you could compare to. Nowadays its more based on the issuing nation’s economy and thus the relative value is fluctuating based on the strengt of the U.S economy.
To start a worldwide economy would probably disrupt quite a lot of national economies, leading to issues akin to what we have seen in the Eurozone.

This is just me thinking about this over morning coffe, so maybe somebody with more knowledge may have a better answer :)

OH.. And I would call it Galactic Credits, just for the added SCi-Fi feel :p

Just the thought of this gives me chills.

Galactic credits? Lol. like the World series of baseball is only two countries.

The UN is not a trade mission. It was set up to help maintain peace. Not doing a very good job of that, are they?

If they did create a currency, they would probably call it sheckles.

^^ I think not.

“Shekel.”

The basic monetary unit of modern Israel, equal to 100 agorot.
(dictionary.com)

You can’t make up money without some value behind it. In the US, we have the dollar which is backed by the Federal Reserve and ultimately by the assets of the US government.

Historically in the US, the value of the dollar was backed by gold or silver or other materials. Some countries in the world (not many) still back up their currencies by gold.

The United Nations has no assets. Therefore there is not anything to back up any money they produce. It would be like monopoly money – pretty, but worthless.