U.N. panel wants new global reserve system

NEW YORK, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- A United Nations panel says the global economic crisis shows the need for new institutions and replacement of the dollar as reserve currency.

The commission, headed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, said a global reserve system should not depend on a single currency.

At a news conference Thursday, Stiglitz called for a new global lender to complement the International Monetary Fund and a coordination council broader than the Group of 20, comprising countries with the 20 largest economies.

"This was not just a problem of something going wrong with the plumbing, and you call in a plumber and you unclog the pipes and everything goes back to where it was," Stiglitz said. "These problems reflect deeper systemic problems that have to be addressed, and we cannot and we should not go back to the world as it was prior to the crisis.... The crisis highlights many inadequacies in our global financial architecture."

The commission is scheduled to release its report Sept. 22.