Ministers, government and mainstream media, insist on calling government money taxpayers’ money. Indeed everyone ‘knows’ it is taxpayers’ money and that is exactly why the government has to be so careful with it – because it’s not really theirs. So indeed did one Neil Mendoza, who is in charge of distributing the £1.57 billion in… Read more
Category:
Banks
Difference between PoMo and MMT may principally be just Strategy
Having contributed to a paper which may even appear on the Positive Money (PoMo) website in due course, I wonder if I may at last be able to shed further light on where Sovereign Money Reform (SMR) differs from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), (which I’d love to rename Sustainable Government Finance – I can hope!)… Read more
Wrong framing can often just be a subtle influence…
The headline in yesterday’s Observer was ‘NHS chiefs in standoff with Treasury over emergency £10bn’. Apparently: The row piles pressure on Sunak to find more money for the NHS ahead of his summer statement on Wednesday. The article says that, according to the NHS: “There’s a very, very significant difference between the phrase ‘the NHS… Read more
The debt deception
It was announced on Friday that government debt for the first time since 1963 is greater than GDP. Indeed it might be worse because GDP is currently declining. Really that is all quite remarkable… How fortunate we are that there were people waiting in the wings with the odd billion in their back pockets –… Read more
Dire news for theatres and bad news for the rest of us
Cameron Mackintosh, the theatre impresario, knows which side his bread is buttered. The Guardian reports that: Mackintosh, his producing partners and Delfont Mackintosh Theatres are starting a process of consultation over potential redundancies for all employees on the four productions. [ Les Misérables, Mary Poppins, Hamilton and The Phantom of the Opera ] Mackintosh said that despite the government… Read more
If there is too much debt…
Isn’t there also too much – by definition – too much saving? Which exactly is desirable – or indeed not? I think the government should tell us…… Read more
Your banker has it…
David Graeber has been having a few words on the economy with Al Jazeera and expanding on his previous ideas. I agree with his view that the ‘Economy’ is a really recent invention (in large measure it was John Stewart Mill, who at least actually called it the ‘Political Economy‘). After all he says, Shakespeare… Read more
If money is created out of thin air perhaps ‘Silence is Compliance’?
“The only disease right now is the racism that we are fighting.” said England football player Raheem Sterling. He suggests that protesters who took to the streets after the killing of George Floyd are trying to find a solution to injustice. That’s eminently reasonable. But when are we going to get aboard the injustice of… Read more
Harvesting other people’s debts should not be a business model
Crises tend to reveal unacknowledged truths. In 2008, we learned that the majority of the financial wizards we had been taught to treat with awe for the previous two decades were, in fact, little more than scam artists — and rather clumsy ones, at that. The coronavirus, and resulting lockdowns, is teaching us an even… Read more
We may be on the money – towards a common outlook
I have been contributing to a ‘Positive Money’ paper on the Covid-19 consequences. I have no idea if it will be accepted but I thought it would be interesting to discover how they are becoming much more ‘government money creation’ friendly! Indeed I think they suggest that they probably always have been (and, actually who… Read more