BBC Radio Four news has tonight reported that we will be told how Johnson’s spending commitments will be paid for in due course. Isn’t this ‘real’ evidence of spend, and tax? And, if so it’s most unfortunate that Johnson got there before Labour……. Read more
Category:
Money
Understanding monetary ‘plumbing’ and where it gets us
There is an interesting podcast from the American site Macro’n Cheese with the Scottish Professor Mark Blyth, who, though he long ago emigrated and has become Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University in the US, he has certainly managed to hang to most of his Dundonian dialect! I have to say I usually… Read more
Is Interest the Opiate of the Masses?
This is the title of an interesting article examining alternatives to interest bearing debt including Islamic finance. Now, looking at the website on which the article appears, I must emphasise that I am not of any religious persuasion and I’d be wary when it gives voice to some rather dubious – to me anyway –… Read more
Swiss ‘vollgeld’ referendum seems to have been as much a fraud as Brexit
I understand that Positive Money’s (PoMo) replacement book on ‘Modernising Money’ has been cancelled and that they are refocussing in favour of research and shorter campaigns such as that which endeavours to stop further sell-off of the Royal Bank of Scotland and others like the report as to how and why the Bank of England… Read more
The Wörgl Experiment
I discovered this short video on the Austrian Wörgl Experiment, by Hollis Doherty, who is as may be too apparent, an actress, and also a writer. She has apparently written the screenplay for a film, “The Miracle in Wörgl”, though, unfortunately, I can’t find evidence of it having been actually made. Still it describes well an… Read more
James Meadway: very right and very wrong
I came across this March article in Novara Media by James Meadway – he of John McDonnell advisor fame – who writes: What matters above all else is something central to the operation of capitalism today. As profits become harder to find through the textbook route of investment and the creation of new markets (whether… Read more
Outsourcing political decisions can be dangerous for democracy
Something else this ‘mysterious’ Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies from the University of Indiana, Bloomington, said was: “Money, like law, is a POLITICAL creation and (like law) it works most smoothly (if not fairly) when it is not recognized as such. Depoliticised money/law means we have something uniting us.” This may be a form of… Read more
What gives money value
I was intrigued by a Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, whose name is unfortunately lost in an FT article I cannot now access. But… this Professor was asked to write about Italian mini-BOTS and assignats. “Some would say they’re complete opposites: assignats “backed” by land, mini-BOTS by nothing. But… Read more
Sticking to Neoliberaslism
I see Simon Wren Lewis is puttting his oar in in support of James Meadway – in the sense that he is supporting his Fiscal Credibility Rule (FCR). This same article is also, by the way, published in the New Statesman. Since Simon Wren Lewis (together with Jonathan Portes – both former Treasury Civil Servants)… Read more
Another reason to know where money comes from
In reply to my post on James Meadway’s critical ‘Tribune’ piece, our own Charles Adams considers that “the MMT [Modern Monetary Theory] debates do not get to the nub of the issue, which is really that it is all about the distribution of power. The state has real power but may choose not to use… Read more