Tag Archives: fiat money
Criminals & Taxation (reprise)
Posted by on Sep 21, 2019
This week on Facebook: 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 (the original can be viewed here).
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.
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. The fraud investigation by the SFO at Lloyds bank (a bank involved in a government £20bn bailout) resulted in six fraudsters being sent to jail and a possible £100 million compensation paid to small-business victims by Lloyds bank (1). Read more of this post
Money Creation (reprise)
Posted by on Sep 1, 2019
In 2013 I came across The New Economics Foundation (nef) publication guide to the UK monetary and banking system with the title ‘Where Does Money Come From?’ contending that there is widespread misunderstanding of how new money is created. The original can be read here, implying that the only widespread understanding of ‘money’ lying in its purchasing power seems a reasonable conclusion and may compliment the monetarist viewpoint. Read more of this post
The Quantity Theory of Money
Posted by on Aug 31, 2019
This week on Facebook: I have to think very hard about whether I am a monetarist or not, the answer seems to depend on how strongly I believe that the State guides its political economy by changes to the monetary supply and other forms of fiat money creation. It was an article or remark of Mervyn King in which he displayed misconceptions about money velocity, particularly with regard to quantitative easing, that first brought the Irving Fisher equation of exchange (MV=PT) to my attention. Economist vacillate over measuring Instruments in economics¹ and while I would hardly call myself an economist — I share in their vacillations. Read more of this post
Plastic Cards & Money
Posted by on Aug 24, 2019
This week on Facebook: As I remarked in my post last week, It is interesting that there appears to be different views on when credit cards become money!
Where does “plastic money” like debit cards, credit cards, and smart money fit into this picture? A debit card, like a check, is an instruction to the user’s bank to transfer money directly and immediately from your bank account to the seller. It is important to note that in our definition of money, it is checkable deposits that are money, not the paper check or the debit card. Although you can make a purchase with a credit card, it is not considered money but rather a short term loan from the credit card company to you. When you make a purchase with a credit card, the credit card company immediately transfers money from its checking account to the seller, and at the end of the month, the credit card company sends you a bill for what you have charged that month. Until you pay the credit card bill, you have effectively borrowed money from the credit card company. Measuring Money — M1 and M2
But what is Money?
Posted by on Aug 17, 2019
This week on Facebook: I have posted a lot on the subject of money, often referring to Investopedia, the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank (which is not a ‘central‘ bank at all) and the Encyclopaedia Britannica¹.
- Investopedia: Everyone uses money.
- IMF: Money may make the world go around, as the song says.
- ECB: The nature of money has evolved over time.
Holding the views I do about money and especially ‘the double coincidence of wants‘ problem, I now find myself torn between the notions of commodity money and fiat money. Of course whether or not either money has value ultimately comes back to the double coincidence of wants, this time being set by the Foreign Exchange Market².
The value of a country’s currency depends on whether it is a “free float” or “fixed float”. Free floating currencies are those whose relative value is determined by free market forces, such as supply / demand relationships. A fixed float is where a country’s governing body sets its currency’s relative value to other currencies, often by pegging it to some standard. Free floating currencies include the U.S. Dollar, Japanese Yen and British Pound, while examples of fixed floating currencies include the Chinese Yuan and the Indian Rupee. Foreign Exchange Market
The reasons for a State investing in another State’s money may be quite complex, which raises the question of if China’s wealth is in the free floating USA dollars debt that it owns, or the fixed floating currency of the Yuan. Read more of this post
What does inflation mean!
Posted by on Aug 10, 2019
This week on Facebook: I am still being asked, “Who is it that this debt is owed to“. The examples of public debt that I referred to last Sunday appear’s to be of little concern to an electorate who assume that economic growth can continue unabated. The electorate’s assumption appears to be that the distribution of this perceived economic growth will be used to support the State’s spending on a social welfare programme. It ignores the history of their public administration’s attitude to debt and particularly to austerity. It was Germany that adopted the earliest modern social welfare programme under the aegis of Otto von Bismarck in 1889 (3).
Sunday 4/8/2019
Posted by on Aug 4, 2019
This Sunday on Facebook: It’s impossible to separate money from inflation in a fiat money world, then it is also impossible to separate money from the gold standard if the rate of exchange is determined by the State.
Money, it’s a crime
Share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise, it’s no surprise
That they’re giving none away
Pink Floyd’s lyrics, “Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie“, hold as true today as nearly 50 years ago when the song was written. A ‘slice of my pie’ is always the issue. In my post of 2011, I wrote that the war reparations of WWI that were imposed on Germany 100 years ago caused the resignation of John Maynard Keynes from the British delegation. In Keynes’ book The Economic Consequences of the Peace Keynes pointed out that the principle of accumulated wealth based on inequality was a vital part of the pre-First World War order of Society and ‘progress’ as it was understood then. Echoing a principle common in todays world that it is unnatural for a population minority to accumulate such huge wealth when so few enjoyed the comforts of life.
The hyperinflation brought about by The Weimar Republic, compounded by the Treaty of Versailles a 100 years ago, being tempered by the thought that it couldn’t happen to money in the UK. Of course I didn’t count on the Bretton Woods Agreement introducing fiat money to the world in 1971. In my naivety (I was very young at the time), I assumed that politicians acted as the representative of their electorate. Instead the State’s public debt is a common function of all working economies. There has been an increase in the debt to GDP ratios throughout the world in past decades and yet The U.S. Dollar Still Dominates Global Reserves.
Perhaps it is time that the eccentric heroine of Christopher Isherwood’s novella Sally Bowles is resurrected — thought I doubt very much that any new terms will be invented for the inflation created by the State in a fiat money world.
Part of the fascination of Weimar Berlin lies in the mirror it holds up to our own time. In Cabaret, fictional Nazis beat up the gay hero and kill cabaret owners who dare to criticise, or simply to make people laugh at, pomp and stupidity. If the musical is at last being staged in a Berlin that never made much of Isherwood, then it may be because the producers want to emphasise alarming parallels. A newly vibrant German and European capital, Berlin today has record unemployment and recession is a returning threat. Some of the young have embraced the violent right, with its hatred of foreigners and permissiveness, and parade menacingly through the streets. Wicked joys (2004)
Inflation!
Posted by on Aug 3, 2019
This week on Facebook: Last Sunday I tried to show the inflationary effect of fiat money that was introduced at Bretton Woods in 1971. While I think it was something that I failed to do successfully, I may have indicated how difficult it is to arrive at a figure for inflation that is not subject to government fiscal policy. Read more of this post
Sunday 28/7/2019
Posted by on Jul 28, 2019
I did consider withdrawing this post, but it has made me look at ‘Measuring Worth‘ in a new light and is useful to me. Specifically it made me consider how complex the issue of inflation actually is in a fiat money world. Especially in the light of the Retail Price Index and the Consumer Price Index that comprise the items making up the UK’s ‘shopping baskets’.
The best that I could do was to measure the value of one pound (UK) using three sequential periods from 1947 until 1970 and from 1972 until 2018. I missed out 1971 as it was the year that fiat money was introduced into the global economy. Even so the cost of inflation to the consumer for a basket of goods not included in the RPI or CPI indices was hard to identify. This is particularly true of groceries that are considered to be a necessary expenditure. Food is approximately 10% of the basket depending on the percentage variability of the other included items. The following notes below point out that measurements of inflation are based on a fiscal policy that is related to the RPI, CPI indices.
Short Stories
Posted by on Dec 8, 2018
This week on Facebook: I have decided to have a lazy December, which turned out to be not as lazy as I had assumed. Nevertheless: December 2018 is going to feature reprises from Aasof’s Reflections beginning with some short stories that I have enjoyed writing. Clearly my first love is web research and I have enjoyed writing and researching material for all of my short stories. The following (in chronological order) are a selection of those that I enjoyed writing and researching the most.
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