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:
Money
‘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
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
Where and what is Monetary Dignity?
We no longer have la corvée, or bridge repairs to undertake once a month. In place of these original societal obligations our society gets things done by spending money. Money is, or ought to be, the equivalent of the common good, which is societies’ method of actually getting things done – for the common good…. Read more
BBC’s continuing learning curve…
This is an item from the twitter feed of Andy Verity, BBC Economics correspondent, about housing and how he thinks the market is overheating: Andy Verity@andyverity·31mThe official forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned about the effect on government finances of a rise in interest rates. Never mind them (they can always ‘print’ money… Read more
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
Hyperinflation – an attempt to buy yourself out of a previous currency collapse
I stumbled across this lovely explanation of the ‘hyperinflation’ – in this case in Zimbabwe. The article by outlining the years of disasters that led up to it, shows clearly that hyperinflation is not ’caused’ by printing money. It concludes: “Hyperinflation” is a kindergarten concept of currency collapse. Calling a currency collapse “hyperinflation” is like… Read more