despair.” ~ “ignorance of money helps bankers and politicians escape“ [...]

I take

the view that the pervasive spread of the direct instantaneous connections of the Internet is leading to the emergence of new tools, and a

transition away from transactions to service provision.

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000085

Peer to Peer

(P2P) architecture has the potential to enable the organic creation of a networked International Clearing Union, from the ground up.

The

difference from Keynes’ ICU vision of a Bancor unit issued by a global institution (from which God preserve us) is that there would be no

centralised issuer as a monolithic middleman and single point of failure.

Instead we would see a networked model based on the sort of credit

clearing architecture exemplified by the Swiss WIR, where goods and services change hands not FOR “fiat” Swiss Francs, but essentially BY REFERENCE

TO Swiss Francs as a unit of measure or Value Standard.

Wherever a barter accounting system incorporates credit, or “time to pay” the

outcome IS a monetary system.

The new P2P finance solutions I have been working on – lately with considerable success – were presented

here:

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/equity-shares-a-solution-to-the-credit-crash-presentation

in the FEASTA annual lecture

last year, and recently in Norway at a Philosophy festival, the theme of which was Money.

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/money-30

activity, and if money is just an arbitrary construct, why ever limit its printing? Just lend money without limit. Then, print some more to pay it

back. Simple! The whole world can be rich overnight. What’s the flaw here?

Suppose you just marked up every account in the world. By a

factor of ten, say. What would happen then?

although this was what was finally adopted by the Bretton Woods conference. Keynes’s preference was for an International Clearing Union – to act

as an independent clearer of cheques between trading nations, and to discipline countries that built up large imbalances – whether they be deficits

or surpluses. As I say, his ideas were overruled at BWoods…..

I am keen to revive his proposal for an International Clearing Union – as it

would the most fair to poor countries….But out in the real world there’s a lot of talk of messing about with baskets of currencies that make up

the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights…That does not to me seem to be the answer…

Ann

inevitability of AUSTERITY – the punishment of the innocents for the crimes of the rich. Cheering on Austerity – as all our political parties are

currently doing – would be economically disastrous. – we would be cutting the legs off the economy in order to bring down the deficit!!!..so we

need to get out there and educate people and explain: the government deficit will decline when the government generates new income. And new income

can only be generated by creating employment.

Gordon Brown does try to articulate this point – but he is not getting it across, and is of

course challenged in these views by the Treasury and the Bank of England – so its a helluva fight!

Ann

reality. It is also the case of course, that while the IMF e.g. permits rich countries like the US to create money out of thin air (Queasing as my

friend Colin Hines calls it), they frown on this being done by poor countries…But to get back to your point: More than fifty years ago, the

economist Joseph Schumpeter noted that
“it proved extraordinarily difficult for economists to recognise that bank loans and bank investments do

create deposits…An even in 1930, when the large majority had been converted and accepted the doctrine as a matter of course, Keynes rightly felt it

necessary to re-expound and to defend the doctrine at some length…and some of the most important aspects cannot be said to be fully understood

even now. “ History of Economic Analysis page 1114. (Allen and Unwin).

Things have not changed much since then. Economists still have a

blind spot for money/finance/credit and the role that credit plays in creating deposits…and I sometimes think this ignorance suits the finance

sector, so may they be behind the determination to keep the process mysterious – and beyond the curricula of economics departments?

Ann

of money helps bankers and politicians escape. [...]

measured. US President Nixon ditched this for the US dollar when oil prices and the vietnam war got too costly. Given that the greenback has become

the de facto gold standard wouldn’t it be better for us all to return to Keyne’s original idea? Money is a powerful psychological concept-you

need to highlight this and its relativities by the lifeboat analogy- amongst the survivors one man has a bag of oranges, the other gold-who is the

wealthy one? who is better off?