Editor 2/1/99 International Herald Tribune Paris Sir; The February 1 IHT carries a front page article regarding Bundesbank President Hans Tietmeyer's "A Proposal to Monitor World Financial System". May I draw to Mr. Tietmeyer's attention and that of others who attended the Davos Conference, that such an institution has existed since the early 1960's. It is called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with headquarters in Paris and membership consisting of all G-7 countries, plus virtually every other developed country in the world. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the successes (many) and failures (few) of the OECD, calling it The International Economic Coordination Instrument: the OECD Experience. This was followed by a book by Yale Economics Professor Richard Cooper on the same subject. My dissertation was later published in expanded form by Universities Press on the Silver Anniversary of the OECD while I was working as a Consultant to the Organization. Copies being ordered by every national delegation. The argument was much as Mr. Tietmeyer puts it: when leading Ministers of Finance and Economics meet together regularly for exchange of policy plans, we contribute importantly to the creation of a "no surprises" future. This was the experience during the Kennedy Administration, during which the United States (and the world) experienced the (till now) longest period of uninterrupted growth in history. When national governments have failed to use the international economic coordination instrument effectively by letting the system settle into routine and sending second level delegates to meetings -- given today's importance of world trade and international financial flows, we run into the problems which plagued the Johnson (and Carter and Bush) Administration. May I suggest that we don't need to re-invent the wheel. Washington, Bonn, Paris, London, and Tokyo simply need to wake up and start using the quite remarkable OECD Committee structure which already exists to bring together Ministers of Trade, Finance, and Economics on the regular basis dating back to the time of JFK. Sincerely. David Timmins, former member US PermDel to the OECD, Professor of Economics (ret.