Tag Archives: fiat money
The Money Tree
Posted by on October 13, 2018
This week on Facebook: Most of those who believe in the existence of ‘A Money Tree’ and particularly those who choose to write about it (either from the political left or right), are not so naive as to believe that the State uses its fiscal policy wisely. The term money tree is used for political effect, yet regardless of political leanings most remain mute regarding the money that grows on it and where it comes from.
The issue of affordability never arises when the proposed spending relates to activities like going to war or bailing out the banks. There Is A Magic Money Tree
Countries like the UK that have their own central bank with which to create and borrow its own currency, claiming that deficit financing is part of a fiscal policy and not a problem as it is only incurred as an investment that is part of government economic policy. Those committed to the political left or right claim that their fiscal policy will encourage economic growth and resolve any deficit financing problem. The State has consistently failed to cover the costs for the future in its management of fiscal policy such that deficit financing always increases the national debt and fails in its social responsibilities.
To paraphrase Peter F. Drucker, it could he said that: The first responsibility of government is to cover the costs for the future. If this social responsibility is not met, no other social responsibility can be met. Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management
The Value of Money
Posted by on October 6, 2018
This week on Facebook: In ‘The Coming Dark Ages?’ I criticised all the articles for failing to point out that (in my view) the prevalence of an economic global hegemony by Western Philosophy relied on a reserve currency in a fiat money world. Money at the centre of globalisation, whether it is trade or war that is the dominant driving force for global economic growth. I was especially critical of the article America enters the dark ages concluding that in my opinion money, war and a rising nationalism, are the most likely harbingers in any coming of a new dark age.
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The Coming Dark Ages?
Posted by on September 22, 2018
This week on Facebook: Judao-Christian and Greco-Roman values is under vicious attack everywhere, or so the writer of ‘Return of the Dark Ages’ (1) believes. The article seems to be written as defence for the values of Western Philosophy, and yet it is the ethos of this Western Philosophy that suggests its evolving interpretation into the beginning of a new dark age (2). Read more of this post
Cassandra on World Debt
Posted by on August 25, 2018
This week on Facebook: I am repeating myself here, in my 2011 post with the title ‘A Universal Debt!’ I recalled, “That someone looked into world indebtedness and facetiously drew the conclusion that The Earth must be in debt to the rest of The Universe. This was because every country in the world had an external debt load (barring about three). Obviously the earth is not in debt to someone else in the universe — unless you are a conspiracy theorist — but it is true that there is a global indebtedness. What really matters, is not the debt, but the ability to pay off the debt with the interest that the debt accrues and the consequences of any inability to do this.” [sic]
All classes alike thus build their plans, the rich to spend more and save less, the poor to spend more and work less. John Maynard Keynes (1919)
For those of us living in the Western world global debt is something that the majority of its citizens do not take seriously as no end is foreseen to the ever increasing economic growth of the Western world. Today global debt is increased and the global citizenry has increased along with its indifference to deficit finance becoming the norm. Matt’s following cartoon repeats that joke, but as Yanis Varoufakis writes in his book ‘Adults In The Room’, politicians and their financiers are using world debt to ensnare us all in a global plutocracy.
The New Silk Road
Posted by on May 5, 2018
This week on Facebook: When I first read about The Great Firewall of China I concluded that it was a model that most States would try to find a way of emulating, the rationale being that it was the first step towards securing the political supremacy of a governing oligarchy under the pretext of a democracy. Now China has launched The New Silk Road¹ (OBOR: One Belt One Road) and notionally democratic governments find themselves not only having to consider a trade war with China, but to seriously consider China’s political model as representative of the future. Read more of this post
Inequality & Technology
Posted by on April 14, 2018
This week on Facebook: The subject of global inequality is clearly one that presents a global dilemma in the search for a rational between the inequalities that economic growth has introduced with the advances in technology¹. The latter being this week’s subject as the harbinger of global inequality that is now being experienced by the developed world. Would that it were that simple, but many more factors are involved and while a scapegoat for global economic woes may be desirable, its use is only papering over the cracks that are now being revealed.
Cash is subversive (2)
Posted by on April 12, 2018
The following is a brief extract from ‘Big Brother Loves You!’ by Detlev Schlichter in which he rails against fiat money and the creation of debt something that I touched on in A Universal Debt. Commenting on the trend towards interventionist policies and assertive state action, The Economist and the Financial Times talk of the trend towards ‘repression’ and ‘national capitalism’ in crisis management. The public believe that greedy bankers and ‘unfettered capitalism’ brought about this crisis. Yet cheap credit through state fiat money and the systematic subsidisation of the housing market, are not features of the free market but of politics. Read more of this post
It’s only money!
Posted by on September 9, 2017
This week on Facebook: Trying to use last weeks post on Criminals & Taxation as a link to those that may follow at some point proved to be very difficult, the reaction of a public administration’s response to economic failure is more akin to investigative journalism than a short, singular, post. So this week I focused a little bit on factors relating to Government economic policy, with particular reference to Social Security and taxation in the UK. My post last week last week illustrated some of the financial disasters that can occur when a public administration overreaches its level of competence. In an earlier post on Debt & Taxation (2013) I began: ‘The role that economic theory plays in the creation of money and the role played by all politicians in the manipulation of economic theory for the purpose of a fiscal policy, bear little relationship to the social responsibility that Drucker applied to a private enterprise.’ Read more of this post
Criminals & Taxation
Posted by on September 2, 2017
This week on Facebook: Sometime in July I read that the fraud scandal carried out at Lloyds bank took the police six years to investigate at a cost £7 million (excluding the cost of the trial). The case was dealt with by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) which, regardless of its successes and failures, as part of the public sector, has an impact on a seemingly inexorable budget deficit. It was only casually reading about the Lloyds bank case that I decided to research some of the government’s financial losses¹ for which no one, and especially not a politician or apparently any other public servant is ever held responsible. Certainly some investigative journalism usually results in a story reaching the public, it may even create a furore for a time, but the government know that any furore will eventually subsided and its cause forgotten. Yet if you are taxpayer, and even if you are not, any financial loss by the government has an impact on your well being. For a right or left leaning government, such financial losses become an excuse for increasing government debt and austerity measures. Read more of this post
All that glisters…
Posted by on July 12, 2017
All that glisters is not gold… [The merchant of Venice — Act 2 Scene 7]
Finding an article that included a simple link to cryptocurrency in support of my linking sixteenth century Spanish bullion to modern mercantilism and the desire of a sovereign power to maintain authority over what is now its fiat money was difficult. I eventually concluded that I had write my own. Debasement of the currency is the inevitable result of abandoning a monetary standard¹ that limits the money supply (or commodity money), giving credence to Keynesian economics and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)². Read more of this post
