It is interesting that Italy has its own Moneta Positiva where debt free money seems to be the call to arms. I generally consider that money is always debt, since all money is a ‘promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of’, which indicates an obligation – and therefore indebtedness. They are clearly… Read more
Category:
Money
Charity begins with government
I’d like to start with a peon of praise as to how the Hospice de Beaune has raised as much as £12million for charity this year. I notice two things since I last attended – an embarrassingly long time ago: The auction is now run by Christies. So the auction is now properly international and as… Read more
Positive Money and Monetary Progress
I’ve been having some encouraging converstions with Positive Money (PoMo) members. First, let me be clear, I use MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) in the sense that the Theory is the Job Guarantee and the Modern Monetary bit is a statement of fact. This is the view that Prof. Bill Mitchell himself takes, having in fact,… Read more
A recipe for reviving European growth …
In a recent FT article (intermittent paywall), that Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s Five Star party, deputy prime minister, states that, Rome’s controversial spending plans will become “a recipe” for reviving European growth and that the continent is ready to abandon austerity and embrace the deficit-busting approach of US president Donald Trump. Current US growth at… Read more
Our money is actually part of democracy
It seems to me we give too much respect to the intrinsic existing processes of the workings of money in our current economy. After all, in fact, money is all created by humankind – and for a purpose, so it has to work for humankind – that’s all of us. The reason it works at… Read more
Positive Money and MMT (continued)
I have been reading Positive Money (PoMo)’s most recent comments on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), whose latest New York conference they attended. I’m worried that they appear to have returned from that conference with a rather confused set of views. They suggest that: “There is a significant difference between money issued as debt by commercial banks,… Read more
It’s a hard life without interest bearing government debt
A rather interesting US article has surfaced commenting on a report published during Clinton’s presidency when the United States government was running a budget surplus and it seemed possible that by 2012, there could be no more US government debt at all. The world would have to do without government bonds known in US parlance… Read more
Modern money theory (MMT) and me: A personal quest for the essence of money.
Crossed posted at Brave New Europe. Until 2008, I was not particularly interested in money but following the global financial crisis I became completely obsessed with how it works. People keep telling me it is odd for a physicist to be writing about money, to which I say, this is what physicists do – figure… Read more
Even more evidence that Positive Money is embracing MMT
To start at the end of Positive Money’s latest article “It is promising that MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) is gaining traction in every corner. We greatly enjoyed attending both [MMT] events and have only warm expectations about working together to design a better, healthier, fairer economy.” “Positive Money (PoMo) has long advocated using public money… Read more
The IMF have suddenly discovered both the price of everything and the value of nothing
The FT has reported that the IMF says that “Cash-strapped governments could find a huge new source of revenues if they managed their assets more professionally” Those presumably will be the ones that the IMF was previously in favour of not just managing, but privatising. “The potential receipts, equivalent to an average of 3 per… Read more