This was a good Zoom meeting: ‘The Austerity Doctrine in the Time of Coronavirus’ here (about an hour), with Yanis Varousakis, Naomi Klein, Brian Eno and Stephanie Kelton, which is quite a line-up. For me Yanis Varousakis was the most on the ball in his assertion that the ‘nightmare of the powerful is that the… Read more
Category:
Economics
Economics Theory
Rural buses
While we are in the area of bus travel some may remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned a report by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) on local bus travel “Every village every hour”. As local elections are coming up the CPRE now have a website with a template email… Read more
‘Better things aren’t possible’
I enjoyed this – old as it is, which I’ve just encountered: It set me thinking that really the journey to understand money is also a journey to show that better things are possible and especially with today’s narrow thinking, also affordable, when ‘affordability’ is so often used to shut down further discussion. Understanding money… Read more
Spectator goes anti-austerity and full MMT
There is an article from this week’s Spectator by Malcolm Offord,who is the founder and chairman of Badenoch & Co (an investment company). He is standing on the Lothian list for the Conservative Party in May’s Scottish Parliament election. The article also appears under the right-wing think tank, Policy Exchange banner, where the title ‘Why… Read more
The UK needs European Free trade for its Balance of Payments
Although this original post may be a bit aged I came across it for the first time recently and in spite of being not convinced of its core point, nonetheless, it may have something to say on the balance of payments. I have given time to the author before and like him more because he… Read more
Macron thinks, Johnson doesn’t
According to the FT – and amazingly to me: President Emmanuel Macron is moving ahead with a plan to close [the] Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). Macron himself was a previous student of that same ENA, which was started by De Gaulle in 1945. It is in effect a post graduate school for administrators and many… Read more
Universal Basic Income (or Capital) plus…
Having highlighted an article from Geoff Crocker I have been investigating his own operated website. He has a really very good introductory video – which I cannot unfortunately show directly but it is available here at the simple https://www.ubi.org/ I’ve drawn from it what I consider the key points to a Universal basic Income (UBI)… Read more
Pipe dreams – ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’
Geoff Crocker has written an interesting piece in Prospect Magazine entitled “How the virus could kill off our damaging debt delusions.” Even if I would prefer the word ‘should’ in place of the ‘could’ in the headline, it is still encouraging to see someone else realise that government is borrowing from itself. The pipe dream… Read more
Bankers’ currency and Conservative deceptions
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
Financial freedom seems to be feudalsim in different clothes
Money as Felix Martin has suggested, seems to give you both freedom and stability. He wonders whether this proposition is possible? After all it used not to be: Barons were for life and inherited that life – and feudal peasants the same. Today’s ‘freedom’ was unknown. Of course today’s freedom includes the freedom to be… Read more