skintnick
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Interestingly the (UK) Guardian just published an article by (US) economist Kenneth Rogoff advocating the abolition of cash. Sure, he has a book to sell, but that just accentuates the momentum that is building in establishment circles. The link is here https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/05/why-cash-isnt-king-any-more
(and yes, I did link to this TAE series from a comment on the Guardian)
@geolib Please amend Fred Harrison video to show the whole screen (some is cut off) or post a link instead. Thanks.
Inspired by the work of Bernard Lietaer, Charles Eisenstein, Silvio Gesell and others I’ve come to believe that widespread adoption of money with demurrage – negative interest which reverses the future discounting of investment under usury – is a fast-track to sustainable finance. More recently I’ve started to look at Miles Kimball’s work and wondered if breaching the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) is another way of achieving similar results through central bank policy. We know Switzerland and Denmark (and, briefly, the ECB a year or two ago) have done so for more mundane reasons, but the Fed and Banks of Japan and England have not so far as I know. Can anybody tell me if the decision not to impose negative rates is legally enforced in these last three/other cases, or just a policy choice?
How long do we have “to get people around you to understand why buying what their neighbors make at double or triple the price of what they pay for what comes from China will make them richer and better people”?
Excellent, thanks; the written word holds so much more meaning than the talking heads on TV that will fill the minds of the majority (with inane hatred?) this evening.
(However, I would have preferred you cut half way and save the financial angle for tomorrow, non?)
@galacticsurfer you say “They do not welcome an economic crisis” and yet – if my understanding of this film https://www.positivemoney.org/2014/12/princes-yen-documentary/ is correct – the 1980s bubble and subsequent depression in Japan was engineered by central banks, IMF etc. to deliberately foist “structural adjustment” on the burgeoning Japanese economy because it didn’t conform to the neoliberal agenda.
“pissed off that we seem to be destroying habitats right left and centre in the name of Green”
Please do not drop that in as if it were established fact; to me it is meaningless.
Maybe I’m overlooking deliberate abstraction for the sake of a pure market analysis (although he happily subverts market forces when convenient: “a new credit crunch where the debts are socialised via government bailouts”, “A better way to manage such enormous capital expenditure on vital infrastructure is via the state”) but phrases like “governments are going to have to explain to their electorates why they have distorted the electricity market so badly, delivering a monopoly to wind producers”, “If it were possible to produce shale gas at $1 / million btus then everyone would be happy” or “If LTO could be produced in large quantities for $20 / bbl then there would be no problem” nonetheless leave me fuming.
The author displays a chilling disregard for climate issues. Renewable subsidies must be provided at the very least – trumping concerns about consumer prices, fossil-fuel profitability or the mechanisms of capitalist markets – if we are to rescue a habitable planet from the holocaust into which the power-elite is intent on driving us. If such incentives (or even more forceful policy leading rapidly to renewables replacing fossil fuels) contributes to systemic collapse, then the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of ignorant commentators and market-players (consumers perhaps most of all) for decades of their hubris.
