At the heart of suggestions the so-called BRICS countries may develop a new international currency system based on gold that's separate from the US dollar are some simple necessities, according to Nathan Lewis.

The United States-based Lewis spoke about this issue in a new episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast. Lewis runs New World Economics, is an author, a former analyst and money manager for institutional investors, and a fellow of the wealth and poverty programme at the Discovery Institute think tank.

As Lewis puts it, the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - need or want some plumbing for trade and debt financing for their governments and corporates.

These countries have been coming together at least in part because their trust and satisfaction with the US-led global financial order, which has the US dollar as reserve currency, has been declining. This has increased as tensions between the US and China have heightened, and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which saw it locked out of the Western financial world including the SWIFT international payments system.

"What was low level grumbling for a long time now has become active efforts to create a new alternative," says Lewis.

"The first basic need is just to be able to buy stuff."

"Most of these countries' currencies have a history of mediocracy or outright failure, which means they tend to fall in value a lot. So no one wants to borrow or lend for any length of time in Russian rubles," Lewis says.

"They need a currency that's reliable enough so they can access the world debt markets, that international lenders will buy these bonds and their own people will buy these bonds. Historically that has meant 'pay me in dollars'."

So why gold?

"They want to land on some kind of internationally acceptable medium...There's one thing that everyone's always been able to agree on and that is gold," says Lewis.

"The reason why it [gold] has been the basis of money for literally 5000 years is because it works. And the reason it works is because it does not vary in value very much. The basic premise is that gold is stable enough [so] it doesn't really cause a problem."

The 15th BRICS Summit scheduled for Johannesburg between August 22 and 24 will be watched closely. Basically these countries want a financial system that functions even if the US does not approve, says Lewis.

If such a system gets off the ground, what might it mean for a small trading nation like New Zealand, that's close to the US but has China as its key trade partner? Lewis expects pragmatism. Ultimately, he suggests, you could; "just go down to your local office of the [Industrial and] Commercial Bank of China and open an account and you're in."

Lewis envisages a scenario where; "99.99% of the time you're just trading gold checking accounts, it's all digital. But if push came to shove yeah, 'you've got to deliver some gold buddy'."

"So I think there are ways of minimising the need for international cooperation," says Lewis.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.