orangatang1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> On 8 May, 18:26, Les Cargill <lcarg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> orangata...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>> That is, to employ a system of full reserve banking.
>> I've never seen this explain how it would improve on
>> existing fiat systems for accommodating growth in GDP.
>>
>> I have seen people talk about "separating credit from
>> money", which seems a wonderful, then an impossible
>> thing. I am not sure it's not simply a euphemism
>> for 100% reserve banking.
>>
>> Aristotle believed that charging interest *itself* was
>> immoral, since money is but a medium of exchange. The
>> immorality was the reifying of an abstract thing into
>> something that was traded for its own sake. But I note
>> that the farther we get from Aristotle on this point,
>> the more prosperous we appear to be.
>>
>> But our ability to produce would have confounded Aristotle.
>>
>> --
>> Les Cargill
>
>
> In a fiat currency the treasury could issue new treasury notes in
> pro****tion to gdp growth. This would keep the ratio of gdp to money
> supply roughly constant. The benifit of this is that we would no
> longer be slaves of the banks. As Josiah Stamp, directot of the bank
> of england, explained in 1940 -
>
> "Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the
> power to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create
> enough money to buy it back again. Take this power away from them and
> all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to
> disappear, for then this world would be a happier and better world to
> live in. But if you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of
> your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control
> credit."
>
There are two cases. Either the players in the fiat money creation
game are ... "lying", or they are not.
If they are lying, then your analysis holds. I don't think they are
I think that Bernanke has been pretty forthcoming and transparent
about why the Fed does what it does. It just has classic
Unintended Consequences effects. In order for the least of us to have
a decent life, we put up with a banking uberclass.
You have to look at how all this is measured, in my opinion,
to determine how the players think about it. It's measured by
unemployment rate. This goes back to Nixon and before. It sets the
tone for Reagan.
Undoing all this would require going back to a very large
drawing board. And I think they *do* try to model GDP, or have
until recently. The problem is that GDP will depend on what
they do.
> Another way to control fluctuations in the money supply is to use the
> bimetallic standard. New metals are mined each year. When the US was
> on the bimetallic standard people could have their silver minted into
> coins free of charge, helping to control deflation. If the value of
> silver rose against the value of currency coins would be sold for
> their metal vaule, helping to control inflation.
>
Here is an excerpt from "Commanding Heights" on why Nixon took
us off the gold standard:
"So the central economic issue became how to manage the
inflation-unemployment trade-offs in a way that was not politically
self-destructive; in other words, how to bring down inflation without
slowing the economy and raising unemployment."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_nixongold.html
Remember that Nixon was still fundamentally a Quaker, as he
was raised. He believed strongly in "as you do for the least of
you, you do for me" from the New Testament.
Please note that there was inflation *while we were on the gold
standard*. If the value of silver rose, people would hoard it
(expecting it to rise further) as witnessed during the
depression.
--
Les Cargill
|
