I enjoyed Jim Osborne‘s comment mentioning what he called “bankers’ currency”. Clearly bankers’ currency is what all currency now is. The only ‘recent’ example of currency that was not (but was in fact the Treasury’s rather than the bankers’) is the short-lived Bradbury’s. It showed that we do not actually need the bankers to produce… Read more
Category:
Banks
Banks exist to create IOUs
That is literally what banks are for. If that is why banks exist, then the next question has to be who are they creating these IOUs for? This is important because those IOUs created by the money issuing authority are of little consequence. It can issue more of them or indeed accept back IOUs at… Read more
Former Comptroller & Auditor-General to be made a peer
Sir Amyas Morse, who left office in 2019, is the first former Comptroller & Auditor-General to be made a peer since the office was created in 1866. Why is this of interest? Apart from the fact that the post takes in being head of the National Audit Office, which is something we have all heard… Read more
Keir Starmer inches towards radical finance ideas
I was certainly delighted that Keir Starmer suggested ‘Recovery bonds’ as a method – in order to, well, recover from the Covid hangover. Yes, most on Progressive Pulse know that government creates money out of thin air so never needs bonds. But others of us might like bonds in order that those savings might earn… Read more
‘Term Funding Schemes’ updated – a quick fix?
There is something called the Term Funding Scheme, which was an initiative to ensure the passing on to commercial borrowers of the Bank of England’s recently lowered rates. There is now another scheme, called the Term Funding Scheme with additional incentives for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)s, which is orientated especially towards small companies and… Read more
The Bank of England was founded on making money out of money
Going back to Christine Desan’s interview I think we can also take some interesting further conclusions: In creating the institution of the Bank of England not only was a Private Public Partnership created but also a mechanism for creating private money which had previously been the privilege of only the money created by the state… Read more
The original motivation of Christine Desan may be indicative…
……and even probably many of us all and perhaps of some of society in general…Christine Desan in discussing her book said she initially “majored in religion and sociology of religion”. The book itself ‘Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism’ is unfortunately expensive to buy but at least it is cheaper as a… Read more
Promissory notes, Treasury notes and Bank notes
In Felix Martin’s Book ‘Money the Unauthorised Biography’ he quotes this wonderful fact: In 1702, just six years after the foundation of the Bank of England, in Clarke v, Martin, the Chief Justice described the still very new ‘promissory notes’ as ‘a new sort of specialty unknown to the Common Law’ and ‘invented in Lombard… Read more
‘Moneyness’ – first impressions…
I’m certainly intrigued by this ‘Moneyness’ concept by Christine Desan outlined in The Monetary Structure of Economic activity. It effectively highlights what the City of London wants – while all the while suggesting that they are (allegedly) influential in ensuring that we all lack sufficient quantities of it – that is, money. In fact, the… Read more
Review of ‘The Magic Money Forest’
The much hyped – at least by the BBC – ‘Magic Money Forest’ on Radio 4 was much as most of us cynics expected. The presenter originally worked for the HSBC bank as an economist and is now a BBC economics correspondent. So although she mentioned MMT it was first as the ‘Magic Money Tree’… Read more