Where the Measure Has Already Been Taken Off the Issuer: Benchmark Reform and Index Units as Completed Separations

Abstract. Whether the two jobs of international money can be separated is usually tested against proposals; this paper tests it against completed arrangements. It applies a stated test — the measure requirement, that the value of an amount must not follow a decision, and the store requirement, that the quantity obtainable must be able to rise when the demand to hold it rises — together with a four-question coding protocol, to four cases in the record rather than in any design. The replacement of the London interbank offered rate by transaction-based benchmarks took the measure off the statements of the banks it measured, at the scale of the world's largest contracts, without a treaty and without touching the store. Chile's Unidad de Fomento has restated long-dated contracts by a published rule for four decades while payment is in pesos. The special drawing right and the 1990 Hard ECU evaluation are the counter-case, in which an official body considered the separation and refused it. Index-linked sovereign debt, including the American prohibition of 1933–77, shows the boundary to be a matter of law rather than of arithmetic. The cases establish feasibility; they remove no issuer, and the limit is stated with the finding. JEL codes. E42; E52; F33; G15; K12 Note. This working paper draws on the author's monograph Escaping the Triffin Dilemma: Mistaking a Contradiction for a Puzzle (complete draft, 2026), Chapter 10 and Appendix §§A.7–A.8. It is not a peer-reviewed publication.