Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform
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The Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER) is an international publishing and education centre based in Toronto, Canada.
Its mandate is to study the destabilization that its members believe current economic and monetary policies have caused, and are causing, for the citizens of Canada and other countries.
COMER argues for a mixed economy (economic reform), and changes in monetary policy (monetary reform) through revisions of the Bank of Canada Act. Specifically, COMER proposes allowing the government to borrow money from the central bank rather than from private banks, effectively allowing the Bank of Canada to underwrite the national debt. Its ideas are inspired by social credit theories of monetary reform.
The committee particularly opposes the discretion of private banks to increase interest rates. William Krehm, a prominent writer for COMER, argues that this "anti-inflation" tool has been abused by the banking sector to the detriment of modern urban societies.
It publishes a monthly newsletter, Economic Reform, which was launched as COMER Comments in 1988. COMER has chapters in Toronto and Kingston that hold monthly meetings.
The group is heavily involved with the Canadian Action Party, a small economic nationalist party which has run candidates in several Canadian federal elections without success. Paul Hellyer, the founder and former leader of CAP has addressed COMER conventions and current CAP leader Connie Fogal is a long-time COMER member.
