Triffin Plan

Summary of Triffin Plan

A proposal advanced by Professor Robert Triffin to establish a system for the settlement of international accounts. Originally articulated in Gold and the Dollar Crisis (1960), the Triffin Plan urged the creation of an international reserve asset to be used only for international account settlement. In some respects the plan resembled the International Clearing Union (read this and related legal terms for further details) scheme proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the early 1940s. Triffin’s proposal, however, stimulated interest on the part of the Group of Ten, which resulted in further investigation of international liquidity problems; the efforts of the Group of Ten subsequently resulted in creation of Special Drawing Rights (read this and related legal terms for further details) by the International Monetary Fund.

(Main Author: William J. Miller)