Domain: positivemoney.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to positivemoney.org.
Comments · 7
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It's a power shift
Who issues the money, hold the power. (You can even find a medieval quote about faces on coins.) Cashless solutions isn't the worst problem, but it is part of a trend moving power from governments to private banks. It is huge and not discussed a lot. Check out Positive Money at http://positivemoney.org/.
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Re:Look on the bright side
Modern banking has nothing to do with where you put money. It's all about where you put loans.
There's just not enough profit in fictional value but there is in the doubly fictional debit.
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Creating money
Creating money out of thin air; the banks are going to have a field day creating their own currency.
Umm, they already do that via the Federal Reserve and similar mechanisms in other countries.
I can see the block-chain tech being useful for various applications, including some financial ones. I don't think Bitcoin itself will be among the useful applications. But that's ok. Proof of concept technology is a valuable thing and while I think Bitcoin is fatally flawed it seems to be a good proof of concept.
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Re:only once
The Government can issue as much (sovereign) money as it likes without causing inflation provided it is in exchange for new wealth so the wealth per dollar ratio is maintained. The limit is the capacity of the economy and ecosystem to produce wealth.
Exceeding this will cause inflation. Borrowing is entirely optional.The causes of hyperinflation are a little more involved than the popular narrative you relate. See Michael Hudson's definition here: H is for...
A more detailed examination of Weimar and Zimbabwe here:
Positive Money
A fuller explanation of the whole borrowing/spending thing here: Warren Mosler -
Re:Why would they fund it in the first place?
Actually, ordinary loans from banks are exactly the same as loans from the Fed. When an ordinary commercial bank makes a loan, they are also effectively printing money digitally. By definition, with a reserve ratio of less than 100% and outstanding loans more than the total assets on reserve, money must have been created to make those loans. In short, "borrowing" from a commercial bank (loan, credit card, line of credit) is also not "real borrowing". Take a look at http://www.positivemoney.org/ for one explanation of why that is the case (yes, that is a UK based site, but the central bank system is the same in the UK). There are plenty of others out there.
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One idea to empower them all
One of the most important 'ideas' or bits of knowledge, that will cause people to become borderline outcasts these days, is the very one that can solve this entire problem:
Private banks create money when they give out loans (95+% of the money in the economy is made up of this debt-based money), but government can create money too, which is not based on debt (thus when government spends it, or invests it, it does not need to be paid back or turn a profit, allowing the funding of unprofitable but 'meaningful' work).This government created money can be used to fund any kind of real meaningful work that you can think of, but this spending is limited by inflation (once an inflation target is hit, no more spending would occur).
Since the rate of inflation depends upon the current rate of economic activity (spending isn't inflationary, so long as it is spent on increasing economic activity, and avoiding resource limits), and since that depends on the current level of employment, this means you can have permanent full employment through government spending like this, before you have to stop spending due to inflation.
This allows government to squeeze the maximum potential out of the economy, and if government wants to take labour away from the private sector, to put towards more 'meaningful' work (that may be unprofitable for the private sector, but is perfectly fundable with non-debt-based money), then government can utilize taxes to deflate the private sector by a small enough amount, to make enough workers available for the more 'meaningful' government-funded work.
This is stuff the Chartalist/Post-Keynesian crowd, including economists like William K. Black and Steve Keen, describe and advocate.
These views tend to make people outcasts though, mainly because people judge it based on todays empirically-false neoclassical economic theory, and because 'the right' hold a virtual monopoly over economic theory in academia, and use this to try and suppress these much more progressive economic views.
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Re:Petty thieves
Pfft, that's nothing: Banks actually create from nothing the money they lend to people (it doesn't come from the vault/depositors), and actually get to charge people interest on that.
95+% of the money in most economies, comes from bank loans (known as 'debt-based' money); they don't just rob us blind with fraud, they are collectively owed pretty much all the money in the economy (since just about all that money, has an equivalent-sized debt attached).
They've pulled off one of the biggest intellectual/political heists in history, by convincing/fooling people, into thinking that control over the money supply and the benefits/profits from that, should stay in private hands (and that having it any other way would destroy the economy); it's been going on like this for more than a century (if not far, far longer), and even with the proliferation of the Internet, this is still not widely known.